I have to say I really struggled with this one.....

After numerous listens I had to play it for fellow UR scribe Lewis B to get his slant and he nailed my search for influences in one; "the problem is it sounds like it's got a bit of everything in the genre within every song". To me this explained my quandary. It had all melded together, giving a generic thrash/metal structure drawing heavily on Anathema, Paradise Lost, the Deftones and, in the lighter moments, Within Temptation - all decent in their own right, but when you take a bit from each the power becomes diluted/watered down leaving the listener with the "It's okay" feel.

Don't get me wrong, this is in no way a bad album; it ticks every box your average thrash fan would need - decent musicianship, timing changes aplenty, powerful chords, downtuned guitars, the odd acoustic intro, decent vocals and decent production - but in the end, to these aging ears all the songs sounded the same. Surely there's more space for innovation than shown here!!!!

There are some tracks that I would recommend - 'Keep Calm And Carry On' and 'Clarity' - but otherwise, no matter how many times I listened, 'Glasnost' just blurred. Not one for me.

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