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U.D.O.
Decadent
AFM Records - 2015
http://www.udo-online.de

The new album from U.D.O. wastes precious little time kicking things off (and into your face) with the opening track "Speeder". There's a real gut-ripping pace set for the song that you'll find is once again a common thread throughout the entire album.

U.D.O. particularly shines as a band in whole on the more murderously uptempo tracks. On "House Of Fake" and "Under Your Skin", the guitar work is outstanding, especially the solos. The latter track comes off particularly vicious sounding.

"Rebels Of The Night" is another great rocker. I also loved the vibe the opening riff to the title track gives off. The song lyrics that are pointedly abhorrent of the rich ruling class worked nicely.

"Meaning Of Life" shines at a breakneck pace. This song finds the band's music and lyrics perfectly blended together to make a stronger finished product.

While the CD track listing is made up of one speed demon track after another, the one ballad type song, "Secrets In Paradise" is excellent. It starts out slow as the song entices the listener in. But not one to go on a more cliched path, the lyrics for this song are very deep and dark. The pacing is slow, melodic and methodical. But the first chorus break explodes with a venomous delivery from Udo Dirkschneider and the song becomes very heavy from that point forward.

I don't know what went into the decision to have Udo deliver the final line of "Secrets In Paradise" as a spoken word choice but it didn't work for me in the least. While I did love "Pain", the same spoken word choice for the final main lyrical passage through the entire song off its axis for me. I could say the same thing about "Untouchables" for a slightly different reason. The song is fine overall but there is a weird pause in between each line of the chorus. At first listen, you would be forgiven if you thought there was supposed to be an extra line during each of those breaks.

The album closes with "Words In Flame" and finds the band aiming for a long form epic track. The musical intro to the song ran about 2 minutes long and so did the outro. In between the band alternates between a very heavy sound and then soft peddles the vocal delivery on the last set of lyrics before building the pace back up during the outro. They could've gone wrong in so many ways with this song but happily, nailed it in every regard.

I wish I could say the same about "Mystery", but sadly it is the one cut on the album that I had absolutely no use for. I'm not opposed to dark subject matter in a song's lyrics but between the really quite depressing set of lyrics and a vocal performance that I simply didn't care for at all, the song is likely one that I'll skip whenever I listen to this album in the future.

I'm recommending this album despite its flaws because for the most part, U.D.O. has once again delivered a balls out rocking album and you won't find yourself lamenting the minor imperfections when you blast your ears with the great selections of molten metal included herein.

4.0 Out Of 5.0

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