I’ve always had a soft spot for the swedish melodic death metal act, The Project Hate MCMXCIX. Their softly sung yet assertive female vocals, their devilishly low male growls, the symphonics and electronics, even their blasphemous and addmittedly, a little ridiculous lyrics. They’ve been doing more or less the same thing since their debut in 2000, but it’s always worked out for the better and it’s never been very boring. After their sixth album, The Lustrate Process, which was close to a classic for me, I was wondering how long they could keep it up. The answer, evidently, was six albums.

Now, don’t get me wrong; The Project Hate’s latest release, Bleeding the New Apolalypse, is not bad. However, when a band does the same thing for that long with little progression, they’re bound to hit a dead end sooner or later. In The Project Hate’s case, I’m surprsied it didn’t happen sooner. They always make a point to make their albums and songs very long while packing in as many musical ideas as they can, just for the sake of continuing their reputation of having long songs. They would have lasted way longer if they would have at least spread out all their ideas a little bit. What they need to do is realize which ideas aren’t keepers and include only the good ideas, thus shortening their songs and albums for those that aren’t very patient or those who feel it’s too much to take at one time. Making things long for the sake of having things long just isn’t working anymore.

The other main issue with this album is the new female vocalist. Jo Enckell was THE clean vocalist for the band, her voice was perfect for The Project Hate’s style and when examined by itself, pretty damn good. Ruby Roque has taken her place on this record, and she does not cut it. Her range isn’t as good, her voice isn’t as fitting for the band and just plain isn’t that good. It all sounds very forced, boring, and uninteresting. She contributes to much of the repetitiveness going on here, escpecially in A Revolution of Desecrated Heavens. Just as soon as you start to think her voice is growing on you, it starts to sound even more out of place. Good news, though; Jörgen Sandström sounds as powerful as ever. The low, clear bark that we’ve come to know and love from him is sounding great on this record, and it actually makes up for most of Ruby’s shennanigans.

That’s not the only good thing this album has to offer either. Like I said, it’s not a bad album. As the title suggests, the riffs and solos are very apocolyptic and evil sounding. The same can be said for the whole instrumentation aspect of the album, really. The production is as over the top and cheesy as ever, plus there’s more symphonic and industrial elements than usual but that’s something The Project Hate haven’t done wrong just yet, they can still make it work. The rhythm section is very well mixed, with the bass audible and the drums with a perfect tone. The instrumentation in general pretty much saved this album from being really bad. Yes, there’s plenty of boring parts to the album but the interesting/good parts are VERY good. See the songs Bring Forth Purgatory, Iesus Nazarenus, Servus Mei and The Serpent Crowning Ritual if you want to hear most of those.

Is it a dissapointment? I’d be lying if I said no. The Project Hate are getting stale, and while they did have a few great ideas left to record, I don’t see them going uphill from here. Bleeding the New Apocalypse is worth a listen if you’re a fan of the band already and you feel like those ideas will make up for the mediocre and boring ones, but even then you’re better off just listening to the aforementioned songs. It’s The Project Hate MCMXCIX like they’ve always been, but they just can’t seem to make it work anymore. They’ve just added to the list of 2011 dissapointments here in the music world, and while it may not be as bad as some of the others (ahem, Morbid Angel) it’s apparent that they’re going nowhere fast.