It’s no secret that the rainforest is essential for us to live. It’s been referred to as the lungs of the Earth for very good reasons; but due to humans and our greed and hubris-centered minds, the rainforests are being obliterated at breakneck speed.

Raising awareness for anything isn’t easy these days, but thanks to determined folks like the members of Savage Lands, the word is being shared on festival stages across Europe: leave the rainforest alone!

Founded by Sylvain Demercastel and his buddy from Megadeth, Dirk Verbeuren in 2022. Savage Lands and the help of their music, the 501 © (3) non-profit has preserved 100,000 square feet of forest in high-risk areas along the Costa Rican coastline.

My favorite Heavy Metal album to raise awareness for anything is of course, Stars, the 1986 album from the  HearN’Aid project. The amount of talent contained in that album (it featured Dio among others) made it an attention grabber, to say the least. Savage Lands Army of the Trees is the best to way to raise awareness for the Costa Rican coastline.

How’s the music? “Black Rock Heart (feat Kai Uwe Faust, Chloe Trujillo)” is a pile driving force of nature, Black Metal vocals over a striding beat reminiscent of 90s mid-paced Black Metal. Army of the Trees is chock full of incredible names in the realm of Extreme Metal. The core band: Poun – Vocals, Sylvain Demercastel – Guitars, Etienne Treton – Bass and Florian Pons – Drums with “special member” Dirk Verbeuren (Drums on “Black Rock Heart”, “The Last Howl” and “Out of Breath). Oh yeah, there’s guests out the wazoo: Kai Uwe Faust – Vocals (Black Rock Heart), Chloe Trujillo – Vocals (“Black Rock Heart”, “Out of Breath”), Alissa White-Gluz – Vocals (“Ruling Queen”), Kenneth Andrews – Guitar (“Ruling Queen”), Andreas Kisser – Guitar (“The Last Howl”), John Tardy – Vocals (“The Last Howl”), Maria Franz – Vocals (“No Remedy”) and finally Lord Of The Lost – Vocals, Guitars (“Out of Breath”).

Army of Trees also features Steeven Corsini (Loco Muerte), Auré Jäger (Akiavel), David & Viber (Sidilarsen), Niko Jones (Tagada Jones), Julien Truchan (Benighted), Stéphane Buriez (Loudblast, Sinsaenum), Nils Courbaron (Bloodorn, Sirenia, DDC) and Aurelien Ouzoulias (The Beat Factory, Mörglbl).

Recorded, mixed, and mastered by Adair Daufembach at Daufembach Studio in Los Angeles, the sound is massive which adds to the hammering home of their message. “Ruling Queen” (featuring Alissa White-Gluz,and  Kenny Andrews) has an Alice in Chains feeling to it which takes the song to a sublime level that will catch your attention right away. It’s moments like that that make me enjoy this album even more after multiple listens and I mean multiple… all day. Needless to say it’s already one of my favorite releases this year.

“The Last Howl” (featuring John Tardy, Andreas Kisser) is hands down my favorite song on Army of the Trees. Tardy’s vocals are fucking vicious, this guy has only gotten better with age and combined with the legendary Sepultura guitarist make it a brutal gut punch that reaches in and rips your spine out, like a pissed off (insert deadly Costa Rican animal here).

“No Remedy” (featuring Maria Franz) and “Out of Breath” (featuring Lord Of The Lost, Chloe Trujillo) are center pieces. The former is a bit more of the Alice in Chains vibe while the latter is a fucking beat down, Chloe Trujillo has a voice that could soothe any savage beast and she’s on fire here.

“Better Man” has a nice chug to it and it sets up “Never Be Up” a sort of poppy (not the artist) Motorhead feeling, if you can believe that. It admittedly isn’t my favorite song, but that’s just me and it doesn’t take away from loving the rest of the album.

The title track has a significant Halestorm feel around the growling vocals. It’s one of those uplifting ones that make you feel all-powerful and the insane solo pushes it along. For some reason, I think about the Ents from Lord of the Rings… can’t really understand why that would be.

“Visions of Life” and “Addicted” are the final hits you get from Savage Lands Army of the Trees. The former is a quick thrasher while the final track brings a very radio-friendly tune. It builds towards the crescendo and while it’s not my style I still enjoy the hell out of this track.

At the end of the day Army of the Trees is an enormous album. Despite the tracks that I guess I didn’t really get; but within the flow of the record they make perfect sense. I don’t really see the need in a for fans of section, I mean if you like the performers featured here then you’ll eat this up.

If you’d like to donate, you can do that here https://savagelands.org/donation/

This is a noble cause. Protecting the earth is paramount as it’s the only home we have. I commend Savage Lands for undertaking this fight.

9 songs in 42 minutes and “B.D.E.” is the album opener with voice and news samples this is a slow brooder with some really good guitar riffing, and around the three-minute mark is when the song rips into a thrash moment, thank god, because before that moment the song was getting to be more of a droning style.  After the speedy moment a jumpy moment with the industrial noises, riffing, and back gang shouting, makes for a better listening experience.

Jello Biafra of Dead Kennedy’s fame returns, yet again on “Aryan Embarrassment” and I just love seeing this long-standing collaboration between Al and Jello continue.  This has some excellent guitar riffing and sampling and Jello takes the majority of the vocal reigns and when the song speeds up to a slow thrashing speed Al gets his vocals in.  The song has guitar solos and wails, samples, heavy riffing, and industrial samples galore.  This song will rupture your eardrums and this is one of the catchiest Ministry songs in the last 15 years.  This actually could have been on Rio Grande Blood, with how this song is structured, and is one of the best albums the band has ever done.

Right after that “TV Song 1/6 Edition” erupts.  This would not be a Ministry album without another TV song thrown in the mix and this is the fastest song on the album.  A great speedy thrasher with multiple vocal effects are all over this song and this song does not want to let up and never does and gets even faster towards the ends.  Excellent song.  This 2 song combo hit is most excellent.

“Cult of Suffering” brings in those New Wave elements I was speaking about earlier and is a bombastic tune with a variety of guest vocals and tons of samples and tambourines!!!  Good song to break up some of the monotony of a bunch of the songs.  Very catchy chorus and for the most part the rest of the other songs are average, at best.

Some catchy moments with “Ricky’s Hand” and “Just Stop Oil” rises up with the fast guitar riffing and syncopated pattern.  This song has multiple tempo shifts.  Beginning slow, then picking up the pace with a lot of industrial metal moments, as well as samples.  This is one of the stronger songs with more aggressive vocal moments as well, once the more aggressive parts hit.

But songs like “New Religion”, “It’s not Pretty”, and the rest are fair to middling.  I find this album more rooted in mid-paced moments, which is fine, if the songs would go somewhere.  It’s like a tale of two halves, as the first half of the album is stronger.  Maybe a flip-flopping of the songs with a different track order would have made the album flow better, in my opinion.

The production on Hopiumforthemasses is fantastic.  The samples generate that industrial madness and the other effects are all interwoven into the music seamlessly and the album cover is striking with just a little bit of color with the mushrooms and band logo.  Excellent cover.  This is a decent Ministry album, but they left some meat on the bone, out there, they can do better.