Bilocate - 2005 - Dysphoria

Out of Jordan comes this Progressive Death/Doom Metal band. The music is towards the slightly melodic, with some heavier parts. Some traces of My Dying Bride can be found here, but this is more
melodic than that. This is actually musically rather towards Arcturus later works and Green Carnation. I also hear some early Ulver in the clean sung passages here, reminiscent of their Bergtatt and Kveldssanger albums, which is most refreshing.

The vocals are towards the My Dying Bride kind, with a lot of spoken passages. The clean sung or spoken passages remind me of both Dissolving of Prodigy and Ulver.

The soundquality is very good, and all the instruments can be heard clearly in the mix. These guys know how to handle their instruments, for sure, and although I usually don't listen to this slower kind of Metal a lot these days, this was actually really refreshing to hear. The production is perhaps a bit
thin, a lot of treble in it, but overall this is not at all a bad record. Actually, the more I hear of this album the more I like it. Half of the tracks on this album are rather long, with the last track, "A Desire to Leave", being just over 19 minutes long.

Standout tracks are "A Deadly Path", "The Tragedy Within" and "Shrouded". Highly recommended!

Saturday October 21 2006, by :Vragh:

Abruptum - 1995 - Evil Genius

This is one of the more accessible recordings by Swedish cultband Abruptum. It collects the two demotapes that were released in 1990, Abruptum and The Satanist Tunes, and the Evil 7" single released in 1991. What sets this collection apart from their other albums is the fact that here we have
more of a standard length of the tracks. Only one of the tracks on this album is longer than five minutes, as opposed to the later 25 and even 61 minute tracks.

The sound on this recording is a bit murky, despite the fact that the tracks were remastered for this release.

The music is more to the slow and heavy side, with some noisy parts. The album has a rather ritualistic feel to it, due to the murky sound mentioned earlier, and the fact that all the lyrics are in latin only adds to this feeling. There really isn't anything out there that sounds quite like Abruptum.

Mostly this sounds like Death / Doom Metal a la early 1990ies, but with it's own special edge to it.
In a way the cold feeling of this album reminds me of Ancient's first album Svartalvheim,
although musically these two albums are not at all alike.

Long ago, by :Vragh: