Ok so I saw this band a few years ago at Wacken and thought they were really good, an energetic mix of thrash and death metal that seemed a very potent live combination. Unfortunately when I bought ‘The Sickness Within’ I found it very flat and lacking in any of the energy that they possessed live. Since that album they have had a change in vocalist, swapping Jacob "J" Bredahl for Jonathan "Joller" Albrechtsen. Their voices are pretty much identical so it makes little difference in that department. For fans of Hatesphere this album will be just what you wanted, more of the same. Songs are belted out at a slightly faster than normal thrash pace and there are plenty of slower chug riffs and breakdowns to offer ‘varitey’. I may be being overly cynical but I swear they set the metronome at the beginning of the album and didn’t really bother to change it. They sound just like how I remember The Haunted sounding, except this band doesn’t have any of the metal lineages that may make me interested in them. The Haunted are a big pile of shit anyway, but that’s another rant entirely.

 The first half of the album passes without any really event, ‘Cloaked in Shit’ starting with a pretty killer riff that, unfortunately, only features as the intro and outro. The first thing to make me sit up and pay attention is when ‘Clarity’ shows up with it’s “Why the hell aren’t I in Megadeth?!” riffing. I can’t help but zone out of the rest of the song and hum ‘Symphony of Destruction’ to myself. This is followed by the half finished sounding ‘If It Kills You’, which is probably the best song so far; if only they had stuck another 30 seconds of riff onto it!

  The album continues in the same vein with ‘The Writing’s on the Wall’ and ‘In the Trenches’ thrashing away in that most European of ways. Overall I would say that ‘To the Nines’ is no great leap from the tried and tested Hatesphere formula. It is bound to get crowds pitting and hair flying in the live arena, but on CD I don’t really find them all that engaging.