Straight Into Your Face without any Compromises - A Review of Hämatom's Die Liebe ist tot

German groove metal quartet Hämatom had finally shown off its true potential earlier this year, when releasing Berlin (Ein akustischer Tanz auf dem Vulkan), an acoustic record inspired country, folk, jazz and swing sounds of the twenties and thirties in the key of television soundtracks of Babylon Berlin. Die Liebe ist tot goes back to the band's more common style in form of aggressive groove metal with angry vocals and harsh lyrics with explicit messages. This album mostly deals with issues on the pulse of time varying from anger management issues to the bleak coldness of our contemporary society.

Hämatom still manages to walk off the beaten path as the ten tunes with a running time of thirty-four minutes offer more creativity than three other outputs by similar bands such as Die Krupps, KMFDM and Ministry combined. The main issue is that these experiments are extremely unstable in terms of quality.

Epic opener ''Dagegen'' focuses on atmosphere over anger and comes around with haunting melodies and a children's choir that is used without stereotypical pathos. ''Ihr wisst gar nichts über mich'' is a catchy, energetic and rhythmic tune with a positive message spreading self-confidence while facing clueless naysayers.

Other tracks however are plain horrible in my book. The rap passages by 257ers in ''Ficken unsren Kopf'' remember stereotypical German gangster rap of the early years of the millennium in the worst possible way. ''Zahltag'' is a chaotic, discordant and unorganized failure that essentially consists of the singer yelling his brain out while delivering death threats.

Some songs are mixed bags on their own such as closing ballad ''Zeit zu gehen''. It's an intense and raw tune mixing aggressive guitar riffs and energetic rhythm section with epic atmosphere and haunting melodies. This combination makes you feel like an old and weathered captain emerging from a brutal storm in the middle of the ocean to head for new and unknown destinations. However, the over-performing vocals are extremely nerve-firing here and might induce headaches rather than inspire any kind of creativity as they destroy what might have been a very decent track with a more variable vocal approach in form of an emotional storytelling.

At the end of the day, Hämatom's Die Liebe ist tot is quite a mixed bag. Some tunes offer unexpected genre combinations, beautiful melodies and interesting lyrics while other songs represent dreadfully failed experiments with dumbly-stupidly nasty lyrics, one-dimensional musicianship and vocals and completely mismatched sound collages. Other tracks even drastically shift in quality from start to finish which makes for most unpleasant auditive rollercoaster rides. Since this record is quite short in the first place, I would suggest to listen to the album and download your favourite tunes since the shifts in quality on this output are quite drastic to say the least. My recommendation for the band would be to tone down the anger, negativity and shock value and focus on musical creativity, positive messages and melodic musicianship in the future.

Final Rating: 50%