UMUR "7th Offensive" is the 7th full-length studio album by Danish death metal act Panzerchrist. The album was released through Listenable Records in July 2013. After a longer hiatus Panzerchrist released "Regiment Ragnarok" in 2011 but although "7th Offensive" was released relatively shortly after that (2 years between albums is pretty normal these days), a lot has happened to the lineup in those few years. Panzerchrist was always a pretty unstable band when it came to the lineup, but this time around there have been more changes than usual as only band founder Michael Enevoldsen (here using the alias Panzergeneral) remains from the lineup who recorded "Regiment Ragnarok (2011)". New faces are Simon Schilling (drums), Nils Petersen (guitars), and Søren Lønne (vocals). Enevoldsen handles bass and keyboards.

The music on the album is relatively brutal death metal, but it´s not without melodic moments, and it´s actually relatively catchy for the style. New vocalist Søren Lønne is a pretty standard deep growling and relatively unintelligible singer, and his singing style suits the music well. The musicianship is overall on a decent level, but to my ears new drummer Simon Schilling´s drumming style is a bit of an issue. Maybe he has been instructed to not play any fills or to play as lifeless as possible, but he sounds so much like a machine, that I initially thought that the drums were programmed. An assumption which was further fueled by the artificial drum sound. Especially the cymbals/hi-hat and the snare drum sound like they were programmed, so there´s an issue with the sound production too.

The material is generally well written and for the genre relatively varied, and as usual the lyrics focus on war, which songtitles like "Panzer the 7th Offensive", "The Stronghold of Hill 666", and "Napalm Alarm", are a testament to. If I have to compare the music style on "7th Offensive" to some of the band´s previous releases, it would be the first couple of albums that I think about, and neither the direct predecessor nor the Bo Summer fronted albums.

So it´s an album with both good sides and bad sides, but overall it´s a decent quality release and if the monotone drumming doesn´t bother you, you´ll probably enjoy it a bit more than I do. Personally I expected a bit more, and I definitely don´t count "7th Offensive" among the band´s best releases, but a 3 - 3.5 star (65%) rating is still deserved.