ICETHRONE - See You in Valhall (BLACK TEARS OF DEATH - CD 2012)
The Viking legacy does not influence the
Scandinavian bands exclusively anymore, as it just infected a certain band
from… Italy! Ha, I don’t really know what should I think about this, certainly
I would prefer Italian band to deal with their own history, especially if they
have such an interesting stuff like the Ancient Rome! But those five metalheads
wanted to write something about the Vikings, so here it is: “See You in
Valhall”, second CD from Icethrone. It is the first time, when I hear of this
band, so I cannot really compare “See You in Valhall” to the previous material.
But honestly I’m not even really curious about “Beggar’s Song” so much…
The info sheet from the label compares “See You
in Valhall” to such bands as Hypocrisy and Dismember… hmm, I wouldn’t
exaggerate so much as I just couldn’t hear much influence from them in the
music of Icethrone. There may be some clear traces of other Swedish bands, like
Amon Amarth and Unleashed here and there, especially in such tracks as “Pleasure
of Hel”, “From the Sea” and “Red Giant Slayer”, some riffs are clearly inspired
by these two bands, but there’s something more to Icethrone I think, as the
band used also some other styles in their music, like folk and pagan metal for
instance, with keyboards, etc, what makes their music more original and not as
typical and straight forward as Unleashed’s. This is good of course and I think
I can say that I even liked some parts of “See You in Valhall”.
But I’m far from hailing Icethrone and their
second album as the most thrilling pieces of music, which I have heard this
year. As the whole I’m afraid that this album is quite boring. It takes
something more to impress me and there are just too many things on “See You in
Valhall”, which I feel could have been done (composed) better. First of all,
the material is just mediocre. Sorry to say, but even if such kind of music has
been explored a lot, it still is possible to play it in good, passionate way. But
I just couldn’t feel the spark here, there’s nothing on “See You in Valhall”,
what would really excite me and make scream like possessed “Oh, what a killer
riff!”. There are some decent moments, some parts, which I quite liked, but it
is just not enough for me. I don’t like the production of this album so much,
I’m not so keen on the vocals… When Icethrone plays fast parts I feel like
they’re just dull and these more melodic ones are hmm too melodic (hehe) for
me. I especially must say that I don’t like most of the keyboards’ stuff in
here. Like that instrumental piece called “Dream” – it sounds so fuckin sweet
and boring that I’m close puking my guts out. Another not so fine example would
be “Fearless”. Or the acoustic passage in “Farewell”. Hmm, definitely Icethrone
tried to sound epic and monumental, but I guess they should listen to Bathory
or Falkenbach once more, if they really wanna know what epic and monumental
should be like. Sorry, I just don’t like it.
So, what can I write in the end? There are
definitely better Viking metal themed bands out there, which I wanna listen to.
There are also better Italian bands, which I like and listen to. Icethrone is
terribly mediocre and honestly I don’t really want to waste much time on “See
You in Valhall” anymore. It’s one of those albums, which you listen to three or
four times and then just forget about its existence, as there’s so much killer
music around that it is stupid to waste your time on something like this. So
I’m not gonna really recommend this album to anyone. Those of you, who wanna
listen to it, will get it anyway, but if you’re looking for high quality Viking
death metal then there are definitely better albums around.
Final rate: 60/100
No comments:
Post a Comment