In the world of Rock and Metal music in particular, Sweden is a country that's renowned for producing stellar acts like SABATON, MESHUGGAH, OPETH, and many others. It can now add another success to its list, as BROKEN OATH have completely blown me away with their debut album "A Different Way", whose confidence and attitude has made the band enter the scene with more than a touch of style.

More Hard-Rock than Metal, each and every song has a slick intro that quickly dives into a catchy riff that wraps itself around the listener and drags them kicking and screaming down the highway with a smile on their face. Often when I review an album as I make notes, I'll put a star next to a song that particularly stands out to me so that I know what the standout tracks were. With "A Different Way", I found that by the end, almost every song had a star next to it. Opening with a melancholy tone in "Shallow Grave", and becoming aggressive in "I'll", we are treated to a diverse range of tones throughout the album as well as a variety of vocal styles and guitar techniques. The eponymous "Broken Oath" is unfortunately a fairly predictable affair, although it contains a decent solo and does radiate a certain menace during the intro.

"Two Birds" is one of the more interesting tracks, using both acoustic and electric guitars during different sections. Lars Höijer also manages to sound quite a bit like Scott Stapp, lead singer from CREED. Lars seems to have a quite a diverse vocal range, as he also bears a resemblance to David Draiman from DISTURBED on occasion, in particular during the later track "Misery Of The Day".

One of the other possible standouts is "Devil's In Me", which, with its matching guitar and vocal pitches, makes it very easy to imagine singing along to in a crowd at a festival or some other live event in the band's bright future. This track conflicts with "World Whisperer", however, as with a great intro, particularly Hard-Rock vibes and simple but effective drumming it truly is one of the best of the record.

I feel very lucky recently to have had an oddly long string of good albums to review, and I'm genuinely starting to wonder if my standards have just lowered for some reason. However, I'm going to ignore this voice of doubt and go with my gut feeling, which is that this is, once again, another fantastic album that I'm privileged to have been sent. Listen to it. Now.