Disbelief’s 2007 album Navigator was an impressive extreme metal release that was comfortable straddling the line between big fat grooves and sprawling atmospherics. Now, 2 years later the band has returned with their eighth album Protected Hell.

Right from proper album opener A Place to Hide it’s obvious that business is pretty damn good in the Disbelief camp.  The song starts off with a riff that could have been on a Nevermore album and vocalist Karsten Jäger sounds like he’s just carrying on from the ass kicking he gave on Navigator. The song has the typical Disbelief slowed down part as well and is quite a terrific album opener. I guess the big difference on this album is that the death metal has almost all but gone from the sound. The only very tenuous link to death metal is the vocals and the music is often groove oriented with a much greater emphasis on making the songs sound tight and to the point. The slowed down atmospheric parts are not as sprawling as they used to be and instead are used in a way to emphasise the dynamics of the song writing.

Stand out tracks include the superb album opener A Place to Hide with its groove thrash opening riff, Hate/ Aggression Schedule with its calm opening and general air of slowed down melancholy, Nemesis Rising again has awesome interplay between the faster and slower parts of the song and Hell Goes On is probably the grooviest song the band has yet written. In fact, there really isn’t a bad song on this album. Right from the start of Unprotected Hell, all the way to song number seven, S.O.S. things are quite literally rocking in the Disbelief camp. It’s only the instrumental interlude Trauma that sort of halts the flow of the album. The other downside to this album is that most of the songs deal in the same tempo and structure. Slow atmospheric sludgy parts go head to head with groovy thrash parts on just about every song here and things tend to get a bit dull towards the end of the album. The songs also sound quite similar to the stuff on Navigator and 66Sick so we’re not really looking at a huge jump or evolution in song writing.

Still, this is Disbelief and when they pull of those big fat grooves it’s still impressive as hell and Karsten Jager’s vocal performance really pushes these songs onto a new level. Not as much a difference from navigator but more like a slight fine tuning of the songwriting. If you’ve never heard this band before then Protected Hell is a great place to start and if you’ve been following the band for a while now then this won’t disappoint you in the slightest. Protected Hell is one solid album where the groove is king of all.



Label -  Massacre
Year of Release - 2009