With their oddly unique blend of death, grind and black metal, Holland’s Consolation have been tearing up the European underground since the late 80s and are still destroying all in their path today. Consolation is really one of those bands difficult to label since their sound changes so much from song to song. The opening track "Fireblade" will bring comparisons to Fear Factory with the keyboarding and very electronic sounding drumming, but the grindy guitaring and chaotic double vocals of Robert and Arjan set them far apart from any other comparisons to them, or any other group. Following this is the heavy groove of "Motocation", which starts out rather blandly, yet builds up it’s aggression mid-song. "Cold Blooded Cold" is a very black metal sounding track, with the high pitched guitar tunings and non-stop blast beats. This leads into "Camel Song", which has rather clean vocals, odd keyboarding and a heavy Alice In Chains-type sound, yet somehow doesn’t end up sounding bad, for all it’s strangeness. "Dead Thrill" is more straight-ahead death metal, with a solid beat, with guitaring somewhat reminiscent of the more melodic Cannibal Corpse tracks. "Holocoaster" starts out very chaotically, and is rather annoying until things slow down mid-song, where it’s much easier to get into. "Route 666" is a slow-groove with well sung high vocals, although it does tend to get a bit annoying after a while. "Killjoy" is fast paced with a rather boring beat and is one of the more annoying tracks on the CD. "Funeral Pyre" has a bit of a 70s rock sound to it, but with the heavily chaotic double vocals, which just ends up sounding more strange than cool. "Murder Death Kill" is another fast-paced bore-a-thon which becomes quickly irritating. "Hellwalker I: Beyond The Darkest Black" is another straight-ahead black metal track, it’s rather well done, although rather typical of most generic black metal acts. "Hellwalker II: Wheels Of Steel" is another black metal track with melodic keyboarding and constipated vocals through-out, pretty boring really. "Hellwalker IV: Black Tar" continues along with the black metal theme and sounds a lot like Dark Funeral and bands of that nature. "Speedstar" is the conclusion to the epic journey the album portrays, with excellent deep black metal vocals and a slow melodic rhythm. If nothing else Consolation are an interesting act to listen to, their lack of any set sound allows them to be creative without restrictions and pull it off rather well. Unfortunately they have an annoying tendancy of putting the interesting material mid-song and wrapping a minute or two of monotonous and irritating music around it. The concept behind the album is rather unique as the lyrics tell a tale, much like a movie script, taking the listener along on their journey. If you want something a little different check out Stahlplaat, although it’s not a favorite of mine, I think there are a lot of people who’d be able to get into something like this.

Review byTeufel