Let me tell you what made us pick this record up in the first place. Black Rock Heart, the first track on Savage Lands‘ debut album Army of the Trees, wildly reminded us of Slap Betty‘s piece of work that aired some years ago. A record containing a lot of progression, some limited emotion, but little substance otherwise.1 Apart from loads of red-hot, well-chiseled Heavy Rock, that is. A feature that rarely garnishes this zine’s review pipe.
So, here we got ourselves a record featuring a limited core band created by Dirk Verbeuren (Megadeth) and Sylvain Demercastel back in 2022. A four-piece studded with a stunningly extensive list of guest musicians to beef up their scrawny wares, I guess. But before crying foul, let’s remember that such formulas can actually work. And work well, too. Avantasia pulled that stunt for a long while already to considerable success and global renown.
Savage Lands posed themselves a very special challenge, though. They opted to adopt some greenish ideology as a backbone to the music, joining the save-the-planet crowd by presenting themselves as a non-profit. Mind you, there’s nothing wrong with that, and their goals are surely noble. And besides, it’s an approach that worked for other bands, too. Such as Gojira, for instance, who decided they wanted to be environmental and metal warriors at the same time.2 And that led them to become one of the bigger global metal bands.
However, the little and most important extra under these circumstances always is the music, of course. Savage Lands need to excel in both their very own frontier, and – at the same time deliver stunning musical prowess. Else, they won’t be selling a helluva lot of records and won’t be progressing with their non-profit too far. The question is, will Army of the Trees‘ sound convince? Welcome to the jungle!
The masters that be of the band boasted musical diversity as their main strength. As per Demercastel, the band isn’t – and I quote “…limited to just one genre…” and would be able to “…boost the strengths of whomever…” might cross their path. And that’s exactly where the main issue is buried with Army of the Trees. The noble cause for sure attracted a ton of usually outstanding talent. But the urge to please and let all them artists ‘excel’ wherever they wanted, led to a stylish mess with no rhyme or reason.
The aforementioned Black Rock Heart, for instance, takes off with shamanesque noise that sounded all too familiar. And sure enough, you feel the earthy hand and hear the grouchy rasps of Heilung‘s Kai Uwe Faust. And you get to enjoy Chloe Trujillo‘s3 high-pitched croak at the same time. This track tries to beat you into a pretzel with a hefty load of Heavy Rock and no shortage of other small style incursions and impurities. Interestingly, Ruling Queen morphed into one of the better tracks on Army of the Trees. Unsurprisingly, Arch Enemy’s Alissa White-Gluz helmed that one with her – as always – pretty remarkable vocal powers. But it is the outstanding solo that will really save this track’s somewhat uneven structure. And that was just two examples.
Savage Lands offers some wild gyrations ranging from Hard and Heavy Rock, over honest-to-god Punk Rock and Metal, to (the hated) Metalcore, some Thrash and Modern Metal, and a riot of proggy variations. I am sure there’s more, but let’s stop right here to avoid confusion. In other words, Army of the Trees often sounds like some uncontrolled and anarchic way of constructing a record. A record that won’t make a lot of structural and logical sense throughout the tracklist. But it does deliver some pretty sturdy and remarkable rock and metal, which will undoubtedly please some of the fan crowd. And this isn’t really surprising, either, looking at the august list of guest contributors.
And were it not for this weird tendency to have someone throw a few unhinged screams into songs that finally garnered some serious traction, some of those tracks would have helped push the overall rating up. Also, impurities such as injecting some out-of-place French revolutionary lyrics just killed the title track pretty much. According to my latest information, the record is about saving the rainforest in Costa Rica, not some old class struggle from long past times.
In the end, Army of the Trees reminds us that just assembling a bunch of songs on a tracklist won’t ever lead to greatness. And this here record is no different. This could have been a stellar mix of rock and metal, built on the foundation of an honorable project. Instead, the musical wares are down-the-middle at best. And some tracks are only saved by the occasional shredfest of a solo or the outstanding musicianship of one of the contenders (Better Man or Never Be Up, for instance). For the environmentally inclined, this type of record may gain significant traction for several reasons. As to this crew, this specific army here won’t last too long on our internal playlist. And that is a pity.
Record Rating: 5/10 | Label: Season of Mist | Web: Official Band Site
Release Date: 14 February 2025