Lamb of God's new album will not surprise either fans of the band or people just getting into them. They seem to be a band who've found what kind of music they want to play, and are perfectly content right now to keep doing that. Some people might rush to judgment and call their formula stale, or claim they aren't growing. Sometimes when I hear that about Lamb of God or any other metal band I wonder what people want; are all metal bands supposed to "grow" and "progress" so much on every album that they eventually reach a point where their sound is unrecognizable to their own fans? I say this because, while some bands do lose their creativity after one or two brilliant albums, a certain few have the ability to stay mostly within a particular genre and continually produce songs that sound fresh, energetic, new, driven, etc. They become something better than predictable; they become dependable. Overkill comes to mind, or Pantera when they were around, or certain extreme bands like Napalm Death. I don't identify myself as a major Lamb of God fan since I'm only familiar with two of their previous releases, so I can't give a full-scale account of their history. I just know that today they're generally lumped in with other successful modern metal acts like Five Finger Death Punch, DevilDriver, Killswitch Engage, Hatebreed, Chimaira, and a few others. Having heard some of the music of all those bands, I have to say that listening to Lamb of God in comparison to the other forerunners of today's metal puts them squarely in the lead in my opinion. They sound the most confident and skilled in their particular niche, and unapologetic in their dedication to a sound they're determined to have, regardless of where the trends are headed. Lamb of God is a good band to have around representing heavy music, as they seem bound to produce albums of solid, thrash-based, groove-fueled metal.
As for individual songs, none of the tracks is noticeably weaker than the rest, and each offers a variety of groove and speed. Randy Blythe's vocals are an acquired taste, one of those elements you're either going to love or hate, but as a fan of extreme metal, I think he has much less of a generic scream/roar than any of the modern bands mentioned above, with the exception of Dez from DevilDriver. The album's opening track, Straight for the Sun, is cool, starting things off with a slow, doomy riff, and the song itself is actually a slow crawl leading into the up-tempo second track, Desolation. The next couple songs, Ghost Walking and Guilty, are both impressive, with a good mix of strong riffs and different speeds. Guilty and Cheated are the two fastest on the album, but neither is about just pure speed. The tenth song, Insurrection, is probably my early favorite, as it seems to have more of a dynamic build-up than the rest, more of an epic quality. The album closer, King Me is a bit different, with some operatic background singing and orchestral instrumentation, but it doesn't come across as overly ambitious or pretentious, especially placed at the very end. Every song on Resolution, including King Me, boasts great riffs that do sometimes remind me of Dime, and sometimes of Killswitch, but the songs still sound like Lamb of God. I wouldn't call them particularly original, but some bands are just good at writing metal songs, and I think this is one of them. They haven't changed much, but they aren't one of those bands that sounds tired, hashing out more of the same old thing to earn a paycheck. Resolution will absolutely please their hardcore fans, but anyone into metal in general like me will probably hear a little something extra in Lamb of God than other current bands they're mentioned alongside. This new release is a solid delivery of aggression and power, offering one good song after another. In fact, as far as metal goes, you might say it's very dependable.