3 out of 5

Produced by: Zeuss

Label: Candlelight

A decade hiatus, and then VoD returned for a pair of albums with Candlelight records.  The break has treated them rather seamlessly, opening track ‘Heart of Darkness’ slipping immediately into the down-tuned riffage and drummage with Tim Williams’ recognizable howl flitting between hardcore shouts and grindcore growls.  But then there’s something else: the track pauses between bursts of fury for some “metalcore” crooning and fairly typical guitar breakdowns.  Is this maturity?  Yes, but it doesn’t quite approach Mastodon’s masterful affectation of more “accessible” elements; Razed is frequently exciting, and track for track, a solid disc, but the scope, stretched to accompany these other aspects, ends up sounding thinner, letting several tracks blend into one another.  Now, mind you, when double-bass drums are a blaring, which is pretty often, ‘Razed’ delivers the goods, and when tracks like ‘Hours in Chaos’ pull this off for their entire runtime, it’s like you’re listening to a direct followup to Imprint.

Producer Zeuss might have something to do with the overall limited range of the sonic palette: some of the vocal recording and the rounded edges to the guitars sound suspiciously like Rob Zombie and/or Hatebreed, both of whom Zeuss has worked with.  At the same time, the technique allows for tracks like ‘Cut My Teeth,’ with its notably grooving bass and sung chorus – a song fully invested in being a thrash / rock track as opposed to trying to blend VoD madness with the same.

Razed to the Ground sounds as energized as any hardcore album put out by the fresh, young faces in the scene, with the benefit of veteran songcraft and VoD’s reliably cut-above lyrics.  While the occasional mish-mash of different hardcore / rock styles allows some of the album to slip into same-soundy territory, it is a reliably headbanging listen all the same.