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Era Vulgaris - What Stirs Within CD (album) cover

WHAT STIRS WITHIN

Era Vulgaris

 

Tech/Extreme Prog Metal

2.18 | 3 ratings

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UMUR
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator
2 stars "What Stirs Within" is the debut full-length studio album by Irish, Dublin based metal act Era Vulgaris. The album was released through Open Your Ears Music in February 2007. Era Vulgaris was formed in 2004 out of the ashes of Gambit.

Stylistically the music on "What Stirs Within" is an eclectic size. Itīs basically a contemporary form of heavy metal with raw vocals (and clean ones too), with a few nods toward technical/progressive metal. The 11:15 minutes long instrumental closing track "Imram" even features a post rock influence, so naturally the music style isnīt easy to define.

The material on the 8 track, 55:08 minutes long album is decent, but seldom really great nor is it that memorable in the long run. What I remember most about the album is the technical parts in "I Must Have Your Brain" and the above mentioned "Imram". The remaining part of the album goes by without leaving much behind. Itīs not as such bad quality material, but itīs certainly not top notch ditto either. The sound production is very thin sounding and the guitar tone has an odd sound to it, so itīs at most of a decent but not great quality.

The musicianship is for the most part solid enough, and especially the raw and aggressive vocals are pretty convincing, but the clean vocals are not that well performed and sometimes even sound out of key. Another issue are the guitar solos, which sound uninspired. Why even bother putting a solo down on tape, when you donīt have more to say than the case is here? So there are definitely some issues which keep "What Stirs Within" from getting a high rating. In fact "What Stirs Within" pretty much leaves me cold, and a 2.5 star (50%) rating is warranted.

UMUR | 2/5 |

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