JUSTIN’S METAL REVIEWS W/C
SEPULTURA / A-LEX
This is without doubt the most ambitious album Sepulltura
have aver undertaken, it’s a concept album based on the controversial film by
Stanley Kubrick “A Clockwork Orange”, (a bleak vision of the future where
recreational violence was the norm, which spookily turned out t be very
prophetic) in fact Stanley actually banned this film himself because he
considered the violence too much and it didn’t see the light of day until after
his death.
Musically speaking concept albums are very tricky beasts to
handle but I’m glad to say that Sepultura have done a good job they have stuck
to the story and managed to write some very good songs as well as stretching
themselves and the genre by writing several instrumental pieces that break the
album up into segments and these add some very good atmosphere to the
album. Putting aside the concept
the songs that strike you immediately are “We’ve Lost You”, “The Treatment”,
“The Experiment”, “Strike” and “Paranoia” all of which work well even if you
know nothing of the film, full of some great guitar riffs and some very tight
licks and they still manage to get that tribal feel into the drumming, which
fits well into the concept. There
are some other good songs that are slightly out of the envelope that work well,
in particular “Filthy Rot” with its football type chant and “Nuff Said”, the
only small criticism that I have is that to my mind some of these are a little
too short.
Overall this is a very good album and one that the guys
should be proud of especially as the Cavalera brothers were not involved in this
CD, if you like Sepultura you will like this, the question most in my mind now
is can they do this whole album live? Now that would be something to behold,
this is a great start to 2009.
WEBSITE http://www.sepultura.com/ & http://www.spv.de/
TOTAL PLAYING TIME = 59 mins + 18
TRACKS
VREID / MILORG
This is a fantastic album and it works on so many levels,
Vreid are a Progressive Black Metal from Norway and this album is about the Second World War form the Norwegian
perspective and is musically entertaining as well being
educational.
As far as the music is concerned they sound similar to
Enslaved and like them they are pushing the barriers of Black Metal, (which can
be a bit conservative at times) and gets my vote every time. The CD kicks off with the aptly named
“Alarm” which is just short of 10 minutes long but doesn’t seem like it when
you’re listening to it; it starts of with an almost folkish feel before going
into some serious Black Metal with a high Melodic content. The tracks “Speak Goddamnitt” and
“Disciplined” swiftly follow and continue the saga but are shorter, more concise
but still damned fine Metal to my ears. The final title track tells the story of
the Norwegian resistance called “Milorg” which is a short form of Military
Organisation.
This is a very impressive album that is well deserved of
your hard earned money and a special mention goes out for the booklet, which has
the story behind each of the songs and is made to look like newspaper stories,
this is a well deserved album of the week.
WEBSITE http://www.vreid.no/
TOTAL PLAYING TIME = 41 mins + 8 HISTORIC
TRACKS