Album Review: "Sacrament" - Lamb of God (2006)

This metal band is receiving quite a lot of buzz as of late, recently playing on the Conan O'Brien show and also tapped as a main stage headliner on this summer's Ozzfest tour, so I decided to snap up a copy of "Sacrament" when I was at the used CD store during my lunch hour the other day.

This is a perplexing album. It combines the best aspects of the genre with elements of the absolute worst, often in the same song. Rapid fire drumming, lightning leads and melodic solos abound throughout "Sacrament", but the growling of the lead singer grows tiresome into about the third track. And, despite the obvious talent of this band, they're dangerously close to descending into self-parody. As if their deliberately provocative yet ultimately harmless name and album cover weren't bad enough, the aforementioned "vocals" are nearly laughable. With song titles like "Walk With Me In Hell", "Foot to the Throat", "Blacken the Cursed Sun", "More Time to Kill" and "Beating on Death's Door", the considerable power of the music itself is also forced to compete with the too-metal-for-its-own-good imagery of this band, coming out on the losing end.

A waste.

Overall rating: 5.25/10