Band:	Forces United
Album:	IV
Style:	Power metal
Release date:	November 2015

01. Stand Together [ft. А. Контузов-Вантула, Nookie]
02. Lie [ft. Е. Егоров]
03. Only Time [ft. А. Беркут, Nookie, Е. Егоров]
04. Understand 3 [ft. Keskiviikko]
05. Fear And Love [ft. Andy Vortex, В. Бажин, К. Немоляев, К. Селезнёв]
06. Is This The End? [ft. G. Edman, Andy Vortex, П. Елфимов]
07. Stars [ft. Mazzy]
08. Morbid Symphony [feat. Cache]
09. Speaking To Yourself 3 [ft. J. Ahola]

Collecting more and more souls with each passing year like some kind of musical Chichikov, Forces United is rapidly turning into a "who's who" of the Russian metal scene, with support from Finland, the United States, and other nations. Up until this point, the project has yielded some very mixed results, but it seems that Forces United's debut finally shows them getting the hang of this colossal undertaking.

A project of such magnitude necessarily faces some difficulty in coordinating all the various members and assimilating so many discrete and diverse parts. I consider IV the most successful Forces United venture to date, mostly because the unity of flavors proclaimed in the appellation of this experiment finally begins to shine through in cohesive units. On earlier releases, the songs often sounded unpolished or jumbled together, like assemblages of separately-recorded parts that were then glued together in a processing plant rather than whole songs performed by a band. Whether the songs gel together as an album is a different matter entirely, but in terms of individual songs, Forces United are increasingly writing better material and becoming more tight-knit.

IV kicks off with "Stand Together," one of this ensemble's catchiest and most explosive numbers yet. The ironically bright and unflappable "Is This The End?" contrasts quite jarringly with the melancholy, beautiful, and introspective "Stars," but the effect is not all that distracting. Cache's feature, "Morbid Symphony," hearkens back to his End Zone days, a blasting whirlwind of harsh guitars flanked by orchestral embellishments; I'm glad to know that, while Forces United have continued to develop in IV this alt-heavy-power metal sound of theirs, the doors are open to other styles.

The fairly casual and loosely-ordered nature of this project also results in multiple versions of the same songs, with a few tracks appearing on multiple releases in different arrangements and performed by different vocalists. "Understand," for example, which first appeared (twice) on I, returns in its third incarnation, here sung stunningly by Anna "Keskiviikko" Sreda. It also seems to be a Forces United tradition to end each release with a very silly remix number, in this case a very lounge-y, brass-coated recut of "Speaking To Yourself." It's terribly incongruous, and, to be honest, Ahola's vocal track has never sat perfectly well with me, but it's also somewhat amusing in its own way. In any case, regard it simply as a novelty tacked on to the end.

While I've mentioned before that IV has the strongest songwriting of any Forces United release thus far, and there are several tracks that won't be leaving my head any time soon, the biggest draw for me is the individual performances. I'm especially delighted to hear the contributions of guitar virtuoso Oleg Izotov, Epidemia's Yevgeny Yegorov, and, of course, three-fifths of The SLoT - Cache, ID, and Nookie. You'd think that she might take the opportunity to relax while recording the third release of the year for a side project with over a dozen other vocalists, but no, Nookie pulls out all the stops and continues to remind me why she's my favorite singer. I made it through the whole rest of the review without fauning, so I think I'm allowed to finish with a bit of totally biased praise. That aside, it's encouraging to see that Forces United's official debut album is easily their strongest work to date, and I hope this means that they will only continue to push harder and grow stronger as they continue.