Volbeat: Rewind Replay Rebound (Republic, 2019)

Danish metal stars Volbeat are back with a new album, their seventh studio effort, titled Rewind Replay Rebound. The band’s last few albums have seen them straddling the lines between hard rock and heavy metal, and achieving major mainstream success along the way, and they’ve also been some of the most accessible, catchy and outright enjoyable albums of the past decade. They go back to that well once again with the appropriately named Rewind Replay Rebound, but don’t quite recapture the same magic.

Even with their similar styles, each Volbeat album has its own unique character. Outlaw Gentlemen & Shady Ladies and Seal The Deal & Let’s Boogie sounded a lot alike, but felt different. Rewind Replay Rebound sounds almost like a repackaging of Seal The Deal. To some degree that’s not a bad thing. Seal The Deal was an incredibly fun album and there are a lot of really catchy, really fun songs on this album as well.

What works well here are those soaring, not terribly heavy songs like “Last Day Under The Sun” and “Maybe I Believe,” which make very effective use of the Harlem Gospel Choir. They’re this album’s “Goodbye Forever.” Early singles “Pelvis On Fire” and “Leviathan” are also standouts, the former because it hearkens back to the band’s early rockabilly metal sound, and the latter because it’s by far the catchiest song on the album. Expect to be singing that one hours later.

“Die To Live” (with guest vocals by Clutch’s Neil Fallon) and “Cheapside Sloggers” (with a guest solo by Exodus’s Gary Holt) are both really good songs, but don’t quite have the same immediate impact as the ones mentioned above. They’re both upbeat rockers though, and Volbeat always does those well. So is “Parasite,” but at just 37 seconds it’s kind of a tease.

The rest of the songs are enjoyable enough while they’re playing, but they’re just kind of “there.” Not worth skipping, but not memorable enough to hit the rewind button either. That’s not uncommon for most albums, especially this far into any band’s career, but it’s a first for a Volbeat album.

There’s a lot to love on Rewind Replay Rebound, but it’s the first Volbeat album that didn’t blow me away from the very first spin and head straight to the top of the “best of the year” list. If you loved the last few Volbeat albums, by all means pick this one up and judge for yourself. It’s definitely a fun album and the songs do grow on you. It never quite makes the jump from good to great though.

Format Notes: There’s a deluxe CD version of Rewind Replay Rebound that comes in a digipack and includes a second disc full of bonus tracks. Most are demo versions of the main album’s songs, but there are a couple of interesting b-sides, one of which (“Under The Influence”) is very memorable.

PS – one other thing to note is that Rewind Replay Rebound is the first Volbeat album not to feature a cover song. That was kind of a bummer.