Although I have heard of the band, Norska, I had actually never heard any of their music. So assuming they are sort of a doom/sludge band with Yob bassslayer I took on the job to listen in and give a short verdict. Norska is highly hypnotic music with purpose and is full of cryptic lines that are truly inspiring. Sometimes growling vocals drag things down a bit, but after a few spins, you can't imagine them being any other way.
Unlike most of the metal albums I've listened to, this album seems to be a little more ambitious. There are few poor parts on the album and while I could find fault with most of the songs, they do seem to be able to stand on their own. The CD clocks in at just over 40 minutes, and every track is between 4-7 minutes long. This allows the band to expand on their ideas a liitle bit for each track. My favorite so far is “Tiphareth” which has impressive guitar work, and is just a well-crafted song.
The septet, including two drummers, two guitarplayers, one vocalist, one famous Trouble-bass player Ron Holzner and one female violinist, Earthen Grave executes their music with much routine, you hear their experience, the compositions are flowing, the breaks well placed and the faster passages add nice dynamics.
These are the kind of CDs that I dislike to review. Not because Morbid Reality is a bad CD. It isn't. But rather because, despite the fact that this is an obviously talented band, that the cdep is professionally produced and that the 4 tracks here are adequately entertaining, Druk Dad just never grabbed me. Portland-based D.I.Y. Noisemongers DD are a quartet who mix crushing riffs, odd time signatures, spastic guitar lines and pummelling dysrhythms.
This up-and-coming CA band pounds out fairly lethal sludge metal in the sick and creepy style of bands like Valume Nob, Fleshpress and Fistula. The band sounds especially heavy plowing through some crushing grooves at mid and slower speeds. It's not all slow, though, and little bursts of speed often accompany chop changes.
It seems that the bands from the Eighties seem to awaken from their long slumber one after one to come back, Torch, Warlord, Picture, Ostrogoth, Vortex, Holocaust, endless list and right now Danish heavy metal band Witch Cross . And as next to nobody has ever heard of them, let me take a little look into the past of them, too.
Freedoms Reign is the brainchild of ex-Fates Warning guitar player/singer Victor Arduini. The band was born out of Arduini's fervent desire to play melodic power/heavy metal again after 26 years of silence.
While the melodies presented on Desperate Souls aren't groundbreaking for the genre, they are quite good and will certainly appeal to fans of doom metal bands such as Solitude Aeturnus, Trouble, Candlemass, Desolation Angels and Wall Of Sleep.
Valient Thorr come from North Carolina and were founded in 2000. Although they had been very busy and Our Own Masters is already their sixth album, I wasn't familiar with their music so far. But listening to the twelve songs on the new record has been a positive experience. Valient Thorr are a punk'n'metal band that sounds like a crossbreed of Zen Guerilla, Baroness and Pennywise The melodic component plays an important role in most Thorr's songs.
I Klatus is an interesting concept. Essentially the brainchild of one man known as guitarist/vocalist/visual artist Tom Denny with enlisted help from various guest musicians all over the Chicago doom scene such as Chris Wozniak (Lair of the Minotaur, Earthen Grave), John Bomher (Yakuza, Indian) Leon del Muerte (Intronaut), Bruce Lamont (Yakuza) and others, the band's output must be heard to really be understood.
