Employed to Serve – Fallen Star (Review)

This is the fifth album from UK metallers Employed to Serve.

With every release Employed to Serve just seem to be getting better. This culminated in 2021’s Conquering, a record that made it onto my best of list of that year. Which is why expectation is high for the band’s latest 48-minute record Fallen Star.

These new songs showcase the increasing development of the Employed to Serve sound. They have built on what they accomplished with Conquering, taking its strengths and bolstering them with new ones.

Fallen Star is a contemporary metal record that’s learned from the past. It takes influence from multiple eras and styles, delivering a collection of modern metal tracks that pull from heavy metal, nu-metal, groove metal, thrash metal, hardcore, melodic death metal, metalcore, and more. This lends the songs a diversity that’s welcome, and allows the band to explore a range of different feelings and sounds across the album’s duration.

These songs are well-written and meaty. There’s further emphasis on hooks and melody to accentuate the heaviness, making for songs that balance emotion and aggression, as well as memorability and substance. The riffs are everywhere, and there are some extremely metal solos, which I always love to hear. Synths and electronics layer the music in places, enriching the atmospheric components that the band occasionally deploy.

The use of clean singing and deep growls from the guitarist add a counterpoint to the lead singer’s harsh screams. These are well-developed and used, making for good dynamics across the songs. All the vocal styles work well with each other and the rest of the music. If that wasn’t enough, Fallen Star also boasts three notable guest singers, in the form of the vocalists of Killswitch Engage, Lorna Shore, (with unexpected cleans), and Svalbard. Unlike many guest spots on albums, each of these enhances the songs they appear on.

Employed to Serve remain one of the best bands in the UK playing this sort of style, and they still only seem to be getting started.

Very highly recommended – don’t miss Fallen Star if you’re a fan of bands such as Bleed from Within, Bleeding Through, Devildriver, The Haunted, In Flames, Slipknot, Soilwork, Sylosis, Trivium, Unearth, etc.