BORKNAGAR

My introduction to Borknagar was through their EPIC album which is a really great mix of death/ black metal and more folky seventies prog rock. A really nice album. This is Borknagar´s debut album and it´s a totally different entity.

The music on the album is melodic black metal which is somewhere between the really symphonic black metal bands like Dimmu Borgir and Cradle of Filth and the more primitive and raw black metal bands like Mayhem and Darkthrone. Borknagar has got a bit from both worlds but it´s very melodic and not really that hard on my ears. Well I guess it depends on the ears that hear. The vocals are very aggressive black metal rasps even though there are a few clean vocals. It´s very few though on this album. The tempo ranges from mid tempo to pretty fast blast beating even though there are no hyper blasts on the album. The emphazis is always on melody.

The musicians are pretty good even though this is not the kind of music where you should expect individual performances from the musicians. This is a team effort.

The sound quality is very good for the genre but at this time in black metal history some bands had found out that you can play black metal without sounding like you recorded your album with a 4-track tape recorder in the bathroom. I know many TRUE black metal fans will disagree but this is not their regular forum, so I´m sure I will not meet much resistance on this view.

This is a very good start for Borknagar even though I find the music a bit too trivial to enjoy all the way through. A couple of songs are more than enough for me and therefore I´ll rate this album 2 stars. Only for fans of the more melodic black metal.