Bolt Thrower - Mercenary
Review: What do musicians do when their vital impulse to conquer has gone inward, and instead of artistic conquest, they would like to make for themselves a captive audience and take home the bucks? It's like avoiding death to have such a lack of tension between what one attempts and the result. Like owning an investment, calling over a subordinate, or having drug addicts for friends while you have an endless supply of drug, it's a sure thing just like that girl in high school whose whole family abused her.
Offer a little kindness, an easy answer and an excuse for not challenging the dominant convenience, and you've got a whole captive audience of empty nodding heads who are thankful for a good reason to do nothing but what they were already doing, albeit in a new and fascinating setting. It's why bad literature, and bad metal, each have a shtick, and Bolt Thrower have found theirs in songs about 20th century warfare, carefully using winding melodic riffs to offset and complement two-chord grinding, and restating themes that worked for them in the past -- similar in approach to how Vader, Slayer and Immortal all vamp their older work but in a pre-chewed, distilled and safe form.
1. Zeroed (5:46) 
2. Laid To Waste (4:40)
3. Return From Chaos (5:04)
4. Mercenary (5:54)
5. To The Last (5:24)
6. Powder Burns (4:46)
7. Behind Enemy Lines (5:18)
8. No Guts, No Glory (4:07)
9. Sixth Chapter (5:41)
Mercenary has less of the outrageously bouncy beats that other nu-Bolt Thrower features, but it's just as simpleminded. Those who make great music give it multiple dimensions and have it explain its own reason for existing, but this has one dimension and lets you assume correctly that its mission is to provide background noise.