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Memoriam are back with a fourth album in five years (they formed in 2016, but their first album came out in 2017). How's that for productive? There was a time when a new album every year was a thing, but it's a rare occurrence nowadays.

I'll spare you from any comparison to Bolt Thrower and Benediction. I'm tired of reading about that and I'm sure you are too. It's like the old Primal Fear and Painkiller thing. Get over it. To the End is mostly mid-paced death metal, but the band does speed things up a little bit here and there. What I like the most here is how the band manages to somehow mix a crunchy, abrasive death metal with a kind of muddy, very heavy vibe. So, you get that urge to break out the air guitar, but at the same time the sheer heaviness of the album just pins you to the ground like there's a tank battalion running over you. What a great feeling! The vocals are mostly decipherable, which is a plus—we're nowhere near clean vocals, of course, but this vocalist knows how to balance things right. "Mass Psychosis" is a bit of an outlier on this album as it has a bit of an industrial vibe, but it nevertheless feels at home on To the End and it's actually a good song; it just kind of catches you off guard because it's different from the rest.

A very prolific band, Memoriam know how to do the old-school death metal thing right while staying fresh enough. I don't know if they can keep such a frequent release schedule, but so far I'm not complaining!