Graveyard / Nominon - EP

 

GRAVEYARD / NOMINON - Split EP (CYCLONE EMPIRE - EP 2012)

This is yet another split 7”EP, which I was planning to get for months, but have been postponing it, until I finally told myself “now it’s time to get it, otherwise it will never happen”. So, along with Anatomia / Offal split EP I also bought the 10th edition of Imperial Anthems series released by Cyclone Empire – which is a split between Graveyard and Nominon. It actually is the first of all ten Imperial Anthems EPs, which I got – I was planning to get some more, especially the one between Asphyx / Thanatos, Pentagram / Master and Paganizer / Demonical, but as always I have been founding something better to invest my money. You know, usually these EPs are not so interesting, because they don’t offer any exclusive songs, but some stuff with different mix of whatever and that sometimes is not worth the money… In case of Graveyard / Nominon it is something different, because both bands offer us covers and both have taken the classic Candlemass tunes to regurgitate.

First comes Graveyard with their take on “A Tale of Creation”. I think this cover has already been published somewhere, maybe on “One With the Dead” CD? Anyway, my vinyl copy of this album has different bonus track. I must say that I really, really like how Graveyard did this cover. First off, they’ve added the classic Sunlight sound to it, what already sounds cool… but the vocals are shared between the harsh death metal growl and clean vocals in the chorus part – and these clean vocals have been sang by no one else, but Dan Swano! And the result is just killer. Very good performance, really well played and sang, so the song is the instant catcher. I guess it helps that “A Tale of Creation” belongs to my favourite songs of Candlemass. Nominon from the other hand picked up a song, which is just one of many Candlemass songs… Obviously I also like “Dark are the Veils of Death”, it surely is one of the best songs from “Nightfall” and I guess it may also be one of the more aggressive songs from the band, so maybe this is why Nominon picked this one up. And their version is also really, really awesome… vicious music, great harsh vocals and this dark, grim feeling. Yeah, this is it! Maybe they’ve played it slightly faster than the original version, but definitely this cover is also really awesome and so I can say that both bands did killer work, so this part of Imperial Anthems is truly worthy being collected. I have no doubt about that… I’ve listened to this EP I think about 8 times today and it just sounds bloody good. A must have not just for the fans of Nominon and Graveyard, but Candlemass as well!

Final rate: 90/100