Undertow - Milgram (CD)

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After a long awaited period, thirteen year old German  act Undertow  release their 5th album, with the help of their new drummer Rainer Pflanz. Nu Metal / Hardcore with some Pop elements, Milgram  has combined old Undertow with some new ideas.
The album contains- what a pity- only 8 songs (including the intro, the outro and an instrumental track!!!) full of the groovy, screaming vocals of Joachim Baschin that remind me of James Hetfield A LOT. The guitars are quite full and the melodies are catchy and easy to listen. There are cool breakdowns and some soul-linking slow parts that really Rock, like the hell-so-doomish track called Homemade Funeral while at the same time they surprise us with the Crawler, brutal, rapid pacing, super Thrash and speed!
New elements that have been added are female vocals and violins, filling with emotionalism the songs and giving a more sophisticated stroke without lowering aggression and power. The album has a strong and tight production done by Roger Grueninger, who is also a really good friend of the band.
I would say that the impression Undertow's new album Milgram,  left was almost positive. I liked the artwork - surreal beauty - and I honestly liked the name Milgram a lot; dunno why! The things I did not like were the huge similarity with James Hetfield in vocals, the number of tracks in total (8? are you kidding, guys?)  and last is that in a weird way, while everything sounded so nice and good, I felt that Undertow  actually pushed themselves to new ideas and  made me believe  they have not matured, losing control of the changes at times. Nice.