I saw the writing on the wall for Equilibrium’s downfall with 2016s Armageddon, and its epically bad lead single “Born to be Epic”). But I didn’t see the next album being such a complete and total disaster that completely alienates the band’s fan base.

After 4 albums that arguably  stand among the very best in epic folk/black metal, the band is completely unidentifiable as the same band, as Renegades sounds like a mid 2008s metalcore/melo-death band, in fact they sound more like country mates Deadlock from that same time than anything remotely resemble Turis Fratyr,  Sagas, Erdentemple or Rekreatur. And anyone expecting anything close to the likes of “Wurzelbert”, “Heimwärts”, “Uns’rer Flöten Klang”, “Wirsthaus Gaudi”, “Ruf In Den Wind” or “Snuffel”  had better get ready for some MAJOR disappointment or better yet, just not even bother with this album.

Instead we get to hear the band’s death knell with a fucking rap break in “Path of Destiny” (I’ll let that one sink in, I wish I was joking) , a pop metal song with female vocals (not good ones I might add) that sounds like a discarded Babymetal song in “Hype Train” (yep, “Hype…..Train”).  And In between, we get generic keyboard and clean chorus laden, 00s chuggy metalcore/melo-death in the likes of “Renegades”, “Tornado”, “Himmel Und Feuer”,  “Moonlight” and the vaguely Far East inspired, save the planet anthem, “Kawaakari” (that is literally an opening riff from 2006)  that Six Reasons to Kill, Fear My Thoughts or Caliban would have dropped in 2006 when the genre was over commercialize and over -saturated. Complete with the same production and vocals.

Penultimate track “Final Tear” is the only listenable song on the album as it has a stern blast beat before the more save the earth, female spoken words ruin it, but then the closing ballad “Rise of the Phoenix” (symbolic of the band’s change I’m sure), nails the coffin shut on what once was a great band. I won’t even get into the inane lyrics (“All gone, all right, Entering just another fight, You’ve got to learn every rule,You’ve got to tell them ‘shut up fool’,Then take it and break it
‘Cause that’s the only way to make it,Your goal for the next decade,Is to become a renegade!”).

I get that the album is a call to arms for Mother Earth, the environment etc,  and  that ‘Renegade’ means “a person to behaves in a rebelliously unconventional manner”, and clearly the band is cementing that definition, clearly changing styles in full force. But ‘Renegade’ also also means “having treacherously changed allegiance”, and “a person who deserts and betrays an organization, country, or set of principles”, and on Renegades, Equilibrium have clearly done both.

RIP Equilibrium.