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Sweden's Enforcer has been reliving the '80s metal scene for quite a while now. In a case of art imitating life, the scene became more accessible and commercial as the decade wore on and Enforcer has done the same on their fifth album, Zenith. We used to talk about Enforcer in the speed metal category but that's largely been replaced with mid-tempo songwriting featuring stripped-down, simpler riffs. There are a couple of burners ("Searching for You", "Thunder and Hell") where you can hear echoes of albums like Death by Fire and From Beyond but you're quickly back to a modestly chugging riff or forgettable ballad. The vocal lines are plagued by way too many whoa-oh-oh's and the choruses are bland.

I am not going to say Zenith is bad, because it isn't. Enforcer went for a sound more in line with 1988 than 1984 and they hit the mark. Zenith sounds like a cross between Skid Row's Slave to the Grind and TNT's Tell No Tales, both albums I like but don't love and, again, not something I expected from this band. And that isn't the problem. A band doesn't have to stay the same, they are allowed to evolve. Enforcer will simply need to reckon with the potential of losing fans of their early material if this is the new path they are committed to.