The fifth studio album from the grease-painted Swedish death/industrial/progressive metal ensemble,
Hail the Apocalypse was put together in Karma Sound Studios, Bang Saray, Thailand and mixed by
Jay Ruston (
Anthrax,
Stone Sour). Punishing, cinematic, and dutifully evoking images of the end times (the first single is the title cut),
Avatar stirs up a flurry of sonic brutality that blends the streamlined, piston-like pump of
Rammstein, the provocative and uncompromising metallic charge of
System of a Down, and the macabre theatrics of
Marilyn Manson and
Alice Cooper. ~ James Christopher Monger