PUISSANCE

"Grace Of God"

Equilibrium Music - 2007

CD

Three years after previous "State Collapse", Fredrik Söderlund and Henry Möller are back again as Puissance, delivering their seventh full-length release. It's Equilibrium Music to release it, shortly after having reissued the Swedish duo's classic and long-deleted debut works, "Let Us Lead" and "Back In Control".

The first impression you get listening to "Grace Of God" is very positive: already in "State Collapse", Puissance had manifested the intention to update their sound and move further, leaving behind all the consolidated clichés of the so-called "martial / industrial" genre, and with this new work they manage to achieve such goal. These new eight titles are definitely their most refined and effective compositions, wisely alternated between gloomy crepuscular songs and powerful, epic hymns, as well as distinguished by magnificent choral melodies and strong atmospheres.

Best examples of the first style are the opening, bombastic title-track, "Warzone", with its thundering percussions and dramatic choruses, "Conspiracy", with its feelings of incoming apocalypse and armies marching towards the inevitable end, as well as the final pessimistic "Brittle" and instrumental "Loreto". The other half of the CD includes the doomy melodies of the confrontational "Stance", the desolation of the funereal voices and piano of "Walls Of Freedom" and "In Death". All these tunes are sung and not anymore just declaimed by Fredrik Söderlund's deep voice.

"Grace Of God" is probably Puissance's best effort since the Cold Meat days: even without being anything revolutionary or never heard before, its refined orchestral arrangements, excellent production and tasty melodic, vocal-oriented vein stick easily out of the overcrowded "martial / industrial" magma, assuring and involving listening experience. Recommended to every follower of the Swedish duo and of bombastic militant sounds.

- Simon V.

Website: http://www.puissance.info

Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/eqmequilibrium