WRONG SIDE OF V.2 EX

When Five Finger Death Punch went into the studio, they found that they had a serious problem on their hands -- they had simply written too many songs. However, rather than go through the arduous task of picking and choosing their favorites, the band decided to just go ahead and release them all, turning their album into a two-volume set. While the first installment was a solid outing from the band, the real question would be whether or not the rest of their material would live up to their own hype. On The Wrong Side of Heaven and the Righteous Side of Hell, Vol. 2, it turns out that the bandmembers were smart to go with their guts, delivering another album of well-crafted heaviness that makes good on their boasts. While the material here is definitely rock-solid, releasing the albums as two separate discs instead of one two-disc set turns out to have been a well-calculated move. Because both albums were written and recorded at the same time, the things that make them both good are, well, the same things. They're both plenty heavy and rousing -- though this volume is more on the emotional side -- but played side by side, the two volumes might have been too much of a good thing. Instead, the break between the two albums gives just enough distance that Five Finger Death Punch fans are more likely to notice the albums' subtle differences than their obvious similarities. ~ Gregory Heaney