Band:	Equilibrium
Album:	Renegades
Style:	Gothenburg metal
Release date:	August 23, 2019
Guest review by:	Zyk

01. Renegades - A Lost Generation
02. Tornado
03. Himmel Und Feuer
04. Path Of Destiny
05. Moonlight
06. Kawakaari - The Periphery Of The Mind
07. Johnny B. [The Hooters cover]
08. Final Tear
09. Hype Train
10. Rise Of The Phoenix

Oh man, I'm late to the party... and it looks like everyone already got angry and broke everything.

Renegades is a controversial topic for Equilibrium fans. I put off listening to it for years because what I originally heard sounded like a big change that I wasn't eager for. Reading many reactions back then wasn't surprising because the metal community doesn't usually respond well to change, but I always wondered whether all those negative comments were accurate or exaggerated. The band added elements of pop music to try to go more mainstream, but that doesn't automatically mean it's bad. Considering I loved when Finsterforst made #‎YØLØ‬, I should be one of the few people who like this, right?

Apparently not. The best thing I can say is that it is a very interesting, professionally crafted mess. "Renegades - A Lost Generation" and "Himmel Und Feuer" I actually enjoy, and a few other songs are pretty close to being good. This is obviously far removed from the olden folky days and I can appreciate that René Berthiaume wanted to do something different, but it's a shame to hear how it turned out. For over half the album, I try to think of how this came to (Johnny) be, and it's confounding.

"Path Of Destiny" is where I know this is wrong. It starts out normally enough, but the poppy (or poopy) chorus doesn't have much energy and is noticeably out of place. Around the time the rap begins, I'm really starting to wonder where the heck Robse is. I flashback to when I first got dropped off at kindergarten, my mom has left, there are all these strange people around, and I'm starting to get scared that I live here forever now. The rest of the songs mostly don't work either. For a lot of the clean singing parts, they could have easily layered Robse growling underneath to make it sound like more of a full band effort, but more often than not it seems like he's missing. To make matters worse, the pop sections that have been shoehorned into these songs are pretty uninteresting. It's the weakest aspect, and I'm not just saying that because it's not metal; even as earworm choruses, I forget them as soon as they are over.

There are four band members credited as doing vocals, and a guest vocalist too, so things feel crowded. If one person has been the main vocalist for nine years, they should probably do the majority of the vocals. That's not a rule, but if everyone else is sharing just as much vocal duty then I get confused as to why that decision was made. Having a separate clean singer when your main vocalist doesn't do clean singing is one thing, but to have a second person also doing lead growls/screams, then it really seems like there was a problem behind the scenes. Maybe Robse just didn't fit with what René wanted to do anymore. Maybe Robse was humble enough to share the spotlight. Who knows? I can tell René was passionate about this album. I can't fault him for trying, but I have a problem with how it appears he handled it. To make this album while apparently throwing longtime vocalist Robse under the bus seems like a bad move. A few years later, René announced Robse is out of the band, and made it sound like it was his fault for being close-minded, which comes off even worse. I hope Robse ends up somewhere better.

The three singles they released between 2020-2021 felt like a step back in the right direction, but Robse is gone now, and with a new album supposedly on the horizon, we'll see what happens.

My ratings might seem mismatched, but the overall rating does reflect my full feelings of Renegades. The production sounds great, none of the performances sound phoned-in, and this was certainly original for Equilibrium. The songwriting is the only place I can easily deduct points because I view this album as fundamentally flawed as a concept in the way it was executed. A few small changes might have made it shine and feel like much less of a slap to the face.