Mark Morton, Anaesthetic, Album Review
Mark Morton
Anaesthetic
Album Review
This latest solo project from Lamb of God guitarist Mark Morton is an interesting one of that and had me intrigued from the moment I heard the incredible teaser track "Cross Off" which you could tell was in development for a long time thanks to the overall quality of the finished track and the guest feature from Linkin Park's Chester Bennington, who did his part and more on this brilliant song before his unfortunate passing.
I can never say that I am that knowledgeable of the Lamb of God discography without telling a great white lie. But one thing I do know is that Mark Morton shows just how talented and versatile he is as a guitarist with this album. He certainly achieves a great diversity with Anaesthetic and allows each track to be instrumentally tailored to suit each member of the impressive cast of guest features.
The vocal talents that aid Mark Morton in this project include the likes of Papa Roach's Jacoby Shaddix, Alter Bridge's Myles Kennedy and Buckcherry's Josh Todd just to name a few.
With all of this in mind, I was very excited to listen to this piece and the first few songs really didn't disappoint. The album fittingly begins with "Cross Off", which I felt was the best way to get the album off to a very explosive start. The songs that followed continued the enjoyability of the album as a whole.
However, while the first half of the album was more than enough to make this a very solid piece, I found myself being quite weary of the second half of the album. None of the songs didn't really strike me as anything more than placeholder songs that cover a certain subgenera of metal. None of them really had that same engaging nature that grips the listener by the throat the same way the first half did so well.
Reverting back to the first half, it contains four songs that stand out to me as the best this album has to offer. The first is obviously "Cross Off". That goes without saying. But I also really enjoyed "Sworn Apart" featuring very heartfelt and powerful vocals from Jacoby Shaddix, the incredible "Save Defiance" featuring Myles Kennedy which feels like an epic Iron Maiden ballad and lastly what I feel is the albums wild card; "Axis" which features Mark Lanegan. A very moody country-metal crossover which feels incredibly immersive and badass all at once.
Despite this album winding down in a way I would've preferred it not to, I can still totally appreciate this album as an excellent homage to the legacy of metal music. In many ways, it kind of comes across as a metal equivalent of a Gorillaz album in terms of aesthetic.
I would certainly be excited if another project like this were to come around from Mark Morton and I would also regard a selection of songs on Anaesthetic as some of 2019's greats.
Thank you for reading
Booth Boy
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