Review: Godhead – 'The Shadow Realigned'

GODHEAD
'The Shadow Realigned'
WARRIOR RECORDS

There's an old adage that too many cooks spoil the broth. But that's not necessarily true, especially when it comes to the ever divisive remix album. It's been six years since Godhead's last outing on 'At The Edge Of The World', and interestingly, they have chosen to look slightly further back than that to their 2006 album 'The Shadow Line' to give the full remix treatment too. They could have cherry-picked the best tracks from every album, or chosen to plug the last of their releases, but haven't. Instead they have picked their strongest album to revisit and give an overhaul. It's a bold move, and it pays off.

The album's fourteen tracks have been offered up to fourteen separate producers to remix. The end result is less like a traditional remix album, and sounds more like when Dimmu Borgir went into the studio to completely re-record 'Stormblast'. This is due to the fact that Godhead are such a diverse sounding band who blend hard rock, metal and industrial in such a way that, over their career, they've supported just about every big band of the late 90s and early 00s.

The original release of 'The Shadow Line' was perhaps the band's most confident and eclectic album to date, and this is reflected in the fact that most of the songs sound so very... Godhead-like. Even the dancier tracks such as the Neon Genesis remix of 'Trapped In Your Lies', with it's heavy dubstep bass, isn't a stretch too far. The stand-out tracks on the album though are the likes of 'The Gift', Ben Moody's take on 'Unrequited', 'Inside Your World', 'Another Day', 'Push', 'Your End Of Days' and 'Fall Down', which could all stand along the band's impressive selection of singles with ease.

The unreleased 'To Heal' brings the sound back to the rockier leanings of the original album, but it still fits in with the rest of the tracks here. The two covers rounding the album off are more hit and miss though. Hit, as the cover of Depeche Mode's 'Never Let Me Down Again' exhibits the same flair that made their heavily rotated version of 'Eleanor Rigby' a hit. Miss in so much as their cover of Kiss' 'God Of Thunder' sounds fine, but nothing too memorable.

With fouteen producers you'd be forgiven thinking that the overall production of the album would be a total mess. But it isn't. The final tweaks have done a good job at reigning in the wilder flourishes of some of the songs and unifies them in a way that still sounds as though it was put together by the band.

At the very least this release should get Godhead back on the dance floors of clubs the world over and have their long-time fans dig out their albums in appreciation. However, this album could easily herald the band's second coming, as the versions of the songs here are well within their scope to reproduce live... and perhaps even a new full-length release could be on the cards? One can but hope.

Posted in: godhead,music,the shadow realigned