WARRING FACTIONS

Now this album kinda confused me at the start, it really took about 3-4 proper listens to fully grasp this album, Ansur are an incredibly talented progressive metal band from Norway, with elements of 70's progressive rock, black metal, extreme/tech metal, jam band, countryish rock and even just plain old heavy metal influences and it really shows, some parts sounded a lot like Enslaved fighting with Rush for control of some kind of power other's just drifted into the stratsphere with its fantastic lead solos that just came out of nowhere, now while i did really enjoy this album there was one fault i kinda didnt like with this album..the vocals.

Now while i am a big fan of extreme metal it just seemed to me like the singer was just throwing his voice around a lot and didnt just stick to one type of screaming/growling and it just sounded anoying and whiney rather than powerful and aggressive (like extreme metal should) musically though its class, opening off with some accoustic guitars on the first track before going into some cool Enslaved like riffs some Mars Volta moments a sax solo and ending with an awsome organ solo, yes a Saxophone AND AN ORGAN SOLO on an extreme metal album, its track 4 AN EXERCISE IN DEPTH OF FIELD that really shows off the guitar player Torstein J. Nipe fantastic talent with some awsome Sikth meets Between the Buried and Me type riffs and in the usual BTBAM style they have a cool country sounding mid section (which also sounds like it was recorded live in some venue) another interesting part in the album is the closing track PRIME WARRING ESCHATOLGIST the intro kinda reminded me of something Duran Duran would write, its just that diverse, but my favourite overall song was the epic CLOUDSCAPER the chorus has this fantastic Death meets Rush sounding vocal melody, just something that made me smile when i heard it;

The Tunguska Incident ? 7/10 Sierra Day ? 8/10 Phobos Anomaly ? 7/10 An Exercise In Depth Of Field ? 9/10 At His Wit's End ? 8/10 Cloudscaper ? 10/10 Prime Warring Eschatologist ? 9/10

My Conclusion? There's not many bands that come along this diverse and actually make it look easy, Ansur are one of them, just a great album for fans of prog in general.