Reviewed By – Stephen Brophy
Mausoleum Records
Release Date – 26-02-2016
Denmark’s Section A return with the long awaited follow up to 2010’s Sacrifice album in the form of Wall Of Silence, a nine track fireball masterminded by Torben Enevoldsen (Acacia Avenue, Fate, Fatal Force) on Guitars, Bass and Keyboards throughout, this time around he has brought in the excellent Niklas Sonne (Malrun, Defecto) on Vocals and Dennis Hansen (Acacia Avenue, Fatal Force) keeping those solid and intricate Drums and some guest Keyboard solos from Julien Spreutels (Ethernity, Epysode). Once again musically this is an excellent piece of work, with some progressive elements mixed in with the overall Metal sound. So we are following on from Sacrifice but in a slightly different direction to my ears, and it works really well.
The more you hear, the more you listen. Niklas’s vocals are superb throughout, and what is always good to hear is that many of the songs have a different feel to them, there is a wide range of styles encompassed in the nine tracks on offer, from chugging Metal riffs to hard rock, some Dokkenesque guitars on ‘Finding The One’, to some Prog influenced material in ‘All That Matters’ which has a beautiful piano intro almost reminiscent of Marillion while ‘Pray For Freedom’ could sit nicely on a Disturbed album, not that the guys are trying to copy anything, but there is definitely a similar sound to the track, and there is quality in how well formed the songs are and there has obviously been a lot of hard work put into this album.
A really nice piece of work this, Section A may not be mentioned as often as they should, but Wall Of Silence is well worth a listen, all of the music throughout is well knitted, well played and sounds great, guitars naturally play a big part in the sound and the keyboards are often quite subtle and interesting and shaking things up a little with the additional guest solos. But I think you always end up coming back to the consistently punchy guitars (be it the catchy or wailing solos, or the chunky riffs) and the vocals that paint some different landscapes across the stories. Definitely an album for a dreary Winters night to pick you up and reaffirm that not everything sounds the same out there, just stick on ‘Bleeding Chains’ and let it dance around your head, great track, solos abound and the keyboard solo in the last section is just classy.
Even in the current climate where we seem to be awash with a lot of excellent releases in the Hard Rock/Metal genres don’t let this one slip past you, you can pretty much pick any track to have a listen to and it should give you enough of a push to check out the whole thing, hopefully Thorben has plans for another Section A album with a shorter than five year gap. It would also be awesome to hear some of these tracks live.
8.5 out of 10
Track Listing:
- Wall Of Silence
- Finding The One
- All That Matters
- No Tomorrow
- How Long
- Pray For Freedom
- Bleeding Chains
- Holding On
- When All Is Falling
