As a death/black metal band, all the musical components here are familiar, but they're put together in a way that's less common for death and black metal hybrid bands. There are a fair amount of orchestral effects here, and these help in creating a general black metal atmosphere and undercurrent throughout the songs. But the most forward presenting parts of the music--the guitar riffs and the somewhat forced gruff vocals--are definitely death metal in style.
While I'm sure there are some other bands doing music in this same general vein, I can't think of any specific ones, so the first sound comparison I thought of wasn't a super flattering one. The blastier parts remind me of the DM bands from around 25 years ago who, instead of actually incorporating popular black metal elements into their music, just got a keyboard player to add Dimmu Borgir-on-a-budget symphonic effects to their existing sound. I won't say Iceland are as bad as that, but it gives me a similar incongruous feeling.
Luckily, the songs that lean more heavily on mid-tempo riffs come across much better, and the album generally improves as it goes along. They really have it together by the last two tracks, which have a mild Unleashed feel to them.
The disc has its fair share of parts where the band are caught between the genres--I often found myself wishing they'd fully commit to more crushing mid-paced death and dispense with the black metal flourishes, and then other times when overuse of death metal brutality ruins what could have made for something substantial in a more pagan/viking metal vein. Despite it being a little uneven in that way, it's still fairly enjoyable and even very good at times, so I consider it two bucks well spent.
No comments:
Post a Comment