VOID OF SLEEP

The music on "Tales Between Reality and Madness" is heavy and quite varied sludge/stoner metal. Stylistically it´s a combination of Black Sabbath influenced stoner doom and Mastodon´s more simple and melodic sludgy material. There´s a slight psychadelic edge to the music too, which provides it with additional flavor. There´s also a slight hardcore edge to the music, which as an example can be heard when the band use bully/riot gang choirs. Frontman/guitarist Burdo has a strong voice and is able to sing both clean and more raw type distorted vocals. He is actually a really skilled singer and a great asset to the band´s sound. The songwriting is of good quality too and add to that a powerful and well sounding production and "Tales Between Reality and Madness" definitely comes off as a quality debut studio album release by Void of Sleep.

It can be argued that the music on the album isn´t wildly original, but when it´s as well played and well written, as it´s the case on "Tales Between Reality and Madness", the lack of a completely unique sound is of little importance. "Tales Between Reality and Madness" is overall a great quality album deserving a 3.5 star (70%) rating.