Roadrunner United - The All Star Sessions

Roadrunner Records, the largest offender of the nu-metal shlock that has seeped into all metal consciousness over the last decade, and a label that loves to rerelease albums to get people to buy them more than once, is having an anniversary. Rather than lower the prices of their CD's as a way of thanking the fans, they've come up with another way to celebrate: an "all-star" CD of songs combining a ridiculous number of musicians from bands that are or were on the label.

Chosen to write the material for the album are Dino Cazares, Joey Jordison, Robert Flynn, and Mathey K Heafy. The choices are a bit odd, considering that Jordison does very little writing during his job in Slipknot, and Heafy has two albums under his 19 year old belt. With so many musicians coming together, this project is one that will either blow people away due to the congregation of talent, or fall apart under the oversized egos of those very same people.

I should mention, before I continue, that most of these musicians are new to me, so if I don't know about how "legendary" they are, forgive me.

The Roadrunner compilation is a staggering work to put together, for the fact that getting so many musicians to work on the same project, and to check their egos at the door, is nearly impossible. The album kicks off on a strong note with "The Dagger". The Flynn-penned tune features current Killswitch Engage frontman Howard Jones on it, and is a nice little ruun through the metalcore genre. If you don't like metalcore, it would be hard to get into the song, but that's going to be true about any of the songs on this album, so get used to it.

There's a little bit of everything in the metal spectrum to be found on this album, from outright thrashers (The Enemy), to punk songs (I Don't Wanna Be a Superhero), to a slow moving acoustic piece (Roads). As you would expect, some of this fares better than others.

Legendary or not, Glan Benton of Deicide ruins an otherwise fun little black metal/thrash metal excercise with his horrid excuse for a death vocal. Even being extreme is no reason for not being able to enunciate. Many death vocalists can do this, and it should be basic knowledge for anyone trying to be a vocalist. Benton is immediately shown up on the very next track, "In The Fire" by the legendary vocal range of King Diamond. Diamond shows he's still in fine form as he belts his way through a fun-filled romp with Trivium's Matthew Heafy.

A pair of more hard rock oriented songs, "The End" and "Tired N' Lonely" fare much better than the more hardcore oriented material, as the slight focus on melody brings the musicians together to form something more cohesive than a wall of noise. "Tired N' Lonely" especially brings the sleaze factor of a good Life of Agony song front and center, and is a completely different feel than any other song on this record. Keith Caputo sounds more and more like Scott Weiland by the day, but he shows excellent vocal abilities as he runs through this song like he's actually having fun.

Dani Filth, or Cradle of Filth, shows hos laughably terrible a vocalist he is, ruining any chance of the substandard "Dawn of a Golden Age" becoming a decent song. A more talented vocalist, Corey Taylor of Slipknot, is wasted on "The Rich Man", not able to let his abilities shine. He's content to do his whispering vocal into shouting chorus routine, which is a shame, since Stone Sour proved that he can actually sing quite well.

"Roads" is the biggest departure on the record, completely acoustic and somber, even featuring string sections. Mikael Akerfelt of Opeth handles vocals on this one, and while the song itself is unspectacular, he delivers the single best vocal performance of the record, showing that even a death metal singer (witness his work in Bloodbath) can have a pristine voice.

The bottom line on the album is this: Roadrunner put together abunch of musicians hoping for them to will a good album out of their collective "genius". That didn't happen. There are some good things on this album, but there's also plenty of filler. The Cazares-penned songs are all typically Fear Factory, and while that's fine for that band, it defeats the purpose of this excercise. The Jordison songs are all strong, which is expected of a veteran musician such as him. The real surprise of this album is Matthew Heafy. The young leader of Trivium shows that he is the brightest star of the future of Roadrunner. His songs are universally strong, and all diverse. From the dark "In The Fire" with King Diamond, to the melodic hard rock of "Blood and Flames", to the straight ahead punk of "I Don't Wanna Be a Superhero", Heafy shows that he can write all styles of metal, while even being both a good melodic singer and a growler. The only downside to him on this album is his collaboration with Dani Filth, but I don't think anyone can get a good performance out of him, so we'll excuse him for not having a great song there.

Overall, this is fun for people who want to get a taste of a bunch of metal styles at once, but there's only a handful of songs worth coming back for second listenings.

Rating: 74/100