Album Review. Skillet - Victorious (2019)

The world-famous Christian rock band has again embarked on the warpath with demons existing around and within us. Over the years, Skillet has been waging its musical struggle with “evil spirits”, releasing album after album, and each time receives a well-deserved reward for its stamina and rebellion in this struggle.

Over their twenty-year history, Skillet managed to release ten full-length records, more than once become Grammy Award nominees, conquer the tops of the best radio charts, perform at major festivals and gain a multi-million audience.

Judging by name of the new album, this time musicians decided to win a crushing and unconditional victory. Moreover, if in previous works the group paid more attention to external problems, conflicts in society, then on "Victorious" musicians decided to delve into themselves.

In terms of the lyrical component, the album turned out to be quite canonical. The main message of the record, as expected, is based on an internal struggle with ourselves. For the most part, these are motivational tracks, calling for the achievement of goals set for yourself and the invincibility of character.

Almost every song on "Victorious" can be broken down into quotes and slogans for motivational posters. In this aspect, the record turned out to be really powerful, calling to action.

As for the musical part of album, not everything turned out as cool as it seems to me. The main problem of "Victorious", in my opinion, is the excessiveness of stamps that overwhelm the record. It has cool melodies, catchy guitar riffs, a variety of arrangements, real rock sound, and hymns-calls.

But when I got acquainted with this material, I leave a strange feeling that I had once and somewhere already heard all this. The most striking example is "This Is the Kingdom". It's just one in one Imagine Dragons "Believer".

The second song on the album "You Ain’t Ready" is nothing more than an interpretation of the famous "One Step Closer" from Linkin Park. And this, apart from the rest of the classic cliches of this genre in the form of monotonous re-singing in refrains and traditional melodic decisions in most tracks.

The only track that really differs in sound from the rest of the tracks on the album is the "Victorious". First of all, when you listen to it, you understand that this is exactly Skillet, and not an attempt to imitate someone. Secondly, the track really turned out to be a good, hit monster and reflects the idea that the group wanted to convey to the listener. And the timely insertion of bow instruments in the overall musical drawing adds an epic composition that Skillet is so famous for.

If take the name of the new record as a basis, then I believe that Skillet did not achieve victory in this fight. You can listen to him, you can even find a new favorite song for yourself. But I would not call it the album, which I'll definitely put on the shelf for my collection.

That's all.

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