Band:	Enforcer
Album:	Zenith
Style:	Heavy metal, Speed metal
Release date:	April 26, 2019
A review by:	omne metallum

01. Die For The Devil
02. Zenith Of The Black Sun
03. Searching For You
04. Regrets [Terminal cover]
05. The End Of A Universe
06. Sail On
07. One Thousand Years Of Darkness
08. Thunder And Hell
09. Forever We Worship The Dark
10. Ode To Death
11. To Another World [CD bonus]

Coming off the back of From Beyond, Enforcer were a band very much on the up, reaping the rewards of a slow-burning career up to that point that finally caught aflame and allowed their star to burn bright. From humble beginnings through the modest success of "Katana" and the consistent improvements with each subsequent venture to what is (at this time anyway) their crowning moment in From Beyond, any follow-up had a hell of an act and reputation to live up to. This in a sense proved to be a weight of expectation that would crush the eventual follow-up Zenith, putting the band in a position that they (admirably) try to control but ultimately get overwhelmed by.

Zenith is an album of two halves really; you have the tracks that are built in the same vein as their prior work, either cast in the same shape or featuring only minor variations, and then you have the songs that they mix up their approach a lot on. This causes the album to have a very uneven and broken flow, speeding up and slowing down like a learner driver learning to use the clutch. There's only a single three-song spree that sees the album find a consistent pace, which is also the low point of the album given they're the weakest tracks, ironically making the one time the album finds its feet a curse in disguise, as it only compounds the issue.

The strongest half is when the band mostly stick to what they know and (can now say) do their best at: straight-up traditional heavy metal with the slightest tinkering around the edges to give the songs a different feel. "One Thousand Years Of Darkness" has a tinge of power metal bombast and sits in well to create a strong track, while "Die For The Devil" sees the band experiment with low tempos and intensities to a passable result. "Ode To Death" is a building epic, starting from an acoustic refrain before becoming a semi-grandiose track (the band don't pull it off very convincingly). The standout track, however, has to be "Thunder And Hell", which is pure Enforcer of old.

The use of keyboards and effects feels so manufactured and ill-fitting that it gives the album an almost novelty and cheap feel, like someone brought a Casio they found on Ebay to the studio and popped it on the songs without regard as to how it would fit into the overall aesthetic. It jars with what is otherwise a good production job. "Regrets" begins the aforementioned three-song rock bottom, as it contains such awful-sounding keyboards and bells that it sounds like a Christmas carol gone wrong, I mentally find myself singing "Do They Know It's Christmas?" over the top of the song to liven up what is otherwise a dull affair. "Sail On" feels like a joke really, a very cheery track that feels so out of place and incomplete that it must be a novelty moment from the band. "Forever We Worship The Dark" is the band's attempt at doing a Ghost track, aping the band's ABBA-esque faux Satanism, and while it isn't terrible, it would be a B-side for Ghost.

While tracks like "Zenith Of The Black Sun" and "The End Of The Universe" aren't as bad, they aren't fun to listen to either. It is at this point it makes you realize that the bad outweighs the good by some measure, to the point that it isn't worth sticking around for and easier to just put the whole album on a shelf rather than hitting the skip button so often for a few tracks.

Hopefully Enforcer can recover the momentum Zenith has cost them; if they wish to stick to what they know, then it is understandable given the results of what happened when they tried something new. If they do wish to give experimentation another go, then I hope the band learn from the mistakes they made here; there is merit in the direction they take but it isn't matched in application.