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I fondly recall hating this band's 2004 album Far From The Madding Crowd, as it was an album so full of obvious talent in service to terrible, wrongheaded songwriting that it was actually fun to hate. Not really surprising that Wuthering Heights have become even more competent and ridiculous in the intervening years.

This is supposed to be a 'harder, heavier' Wuthering Heights, by which they mean the band has discovered what that 'overdrive' button on their amps is for, and there is actually some heaviness going on here. If you claim that WH are talented performers you will get no argument from me, as they are sharp, tight, clean players, and singer Nils Johansson is obviously pro. If you said they are talented songwriters then please let me point out that you are a fucking idiot. This is an album put together by a band who have no songwriting aesthetic besides "MORE", and their sound is an overloaded mess with little coherence or direction. Every musical choice on this disc is explicable only by the shrug if shoulders and the words "for some reason", as there is never any good reason for the decisions they make. They remain as devoted to silly polka melodies as ever, and despite some actually good riffs here and there, the whole is buried under a slurry of pretension and wanking.

You could argue that this is a 'good' band by some measure I am not familiar with, but this is clearly a band who know or care very little about metal, and have no sense of metal songwriting. If you like this album, fine. But its relevance as a metal album is nil, and whatever personal affection you have for it should be tempered with shame.