Maybe it’s just my imagination, but it seems like there was a week or two there where we weren’t being sent a lot of reader recommendations… and then over the past four or five days, I feel like we’ve just been bombarded with “YOU HAVE TO CHECK OUT THIS BAND THEY RULE SO HARD!!!” e-mails. Since it seems to be a slow news morning, I thought I’d go through a bunch of ‘em, picking out bands completely at random.

I haven’t listened to any of these bands in advance of writing this, so the following column will be one of those “Let’s discover the music together!”-type deals. Inevitably, some/most of these groups are gonna blow, but hopefully we’ll find a gem or two in the pile as well.

And so…

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Here’s two things I don’t understand about “In Bloodred Shades,” the new Mercenary song (below):

• Why “bloodred” and not “blood red?”
• How do you challenge In Flames and then release something that sounds like it should have been on A Sense of Purpose?

I’ve been listening to this song and various tunes from The Hours That Remain back-to-back, trying to figure out why I like this less than the band’s old material, because in a lot of ways, the changes to the band’s sound have been minimal — they’re still powered by Gothenburg riffs and good cop/bad cop vocals, after all.

But…

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So Mercenary shed 50% of their line-up last year, losing vocalist Mikkel Sandager, drummer Mike Park Nielsen, and keyboardist Morten Sandager because they “no longer share the same vision” for the group as their bandmates; remaining members Martin Buus, Jakob Mølbjerg, and René Pedersen apparently “wanted to play faster, heavier and more modern (yet old school) material.” And that sounds encouraging, but anytime a great band suddenly loses a substantial amount of its line-up, fans will inevitably be on pins and needles waiting to hear new material to see how everything pans out.

And if you’re a Mercenary fan, those pins and needles just drove themselves right up into your feet, causing you to fall to the ground screaming in agony while you roll around in a puddle of your own blood.

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Half these dudes ain’t even in the band anymore!

No, I don’t mean that our favorite Dutch Danish [Sorry! -Ed.] power-death metallers are making a crabcore album – at least, they’re not as far as I’m aware.

No, I’m referring to the fact that Mercenary are handling their decimated line-up situation not just by hiring new members, but by shifting some old ones around, too. The band have announced not only the addition of new drummer Morten Løwe Sørensen to their ranks, but that bassist René Pedersen – who has also handled the band’s screaming/growling/non-singing vocals up since 2006 – will now step up to the plate to take the place of departed clean vocalist Mikkel Sandager, too. A statement from the band reads:

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A reader known only as “Mike” tipped us off that one of our most favoritest bands, Denmark’s Mercenary, has parted ways with three of its six members: vocalist Mikkel Sandager, drummer Mike Park Nielsen, and keyboardist Morten Sandager.

Rhythm guitarist Jakob Mølbjerg explains in a statement:

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