This is an interesting split release. First off are Albatross who are an Epic Power Metal (i.e traditional metal) group from India, heavily influenced by the horror theatrics and vocal styles of King Diamond, and Sheavy’s Steve Hennessy. On the flip side Vestal Claret are an American epic heavy metal band (with ex-Hour of 13 member Phillip Swanson) who cite a few doom influences along the way such as Sorcerer. From personal experience trying to buy some of the latter’s releases on the internet, Vestal Claret’s material fetches a pretty high price let me tell you!

Dealing with Albatross first, they offer 4 tracks; ‘Uncle Sunny at the Tavern’ is bizarre epic music and very infectious. The bizarreness comes from some of the vocals, every now and again horror character inspired screams and spells come out of this bands cauldron. Musically, it’s got some groove, it’s got some character, all in all, Albatross are a cool find for me. If you take some of the vocal phrases and styles of the aforementioned King Diamond and fuse with the arrangement of someone like Briton Rites, you kind of get the picture of the way these stories unfold. The tracks on ‘The Kissing Fields’ are well written and executed with a deft, an almost understated level of professionalism. This is well written music.

So for one, Albatross is the horror part of the split, the occult part of this split release comes from Vestal Claret.

Vestal Claret’s contribution comes in the form of one track, ‘Black Priest’ and this is a real epic at over 17 minutes in total. There are no long boring noodling structures around one particular riff, in fact, its sounds more like a conceptual song. There are many “movements”, many times changes, phrase changes that thunder a full black magic feel out through any sound system. The eerie feel to me makes me feel the same as listening to some of Pagan Altar’s early material, with some Sabbath rhythm, well, metal would not be metal without a little ‘Masters of Reality’ era material included now would it! The marriage of these styles speaks volumes for the bands vision and previous recorded output, long may this continue.

This split has it all, recommended for fans of NWOBHM, early Swedish Doom, Epic heavy metal like Manilla Road, essentially occult epic heavy metal in general and I feel totally comfortable with such a splendid release to rate as I have. These are two bands certainly worth checking out, but in truth for myself, Vestal Claret would normally have to win the first prize on this split CD (but I am torn if the truth be told). Albatross are certainly no back markers, they also have something special, and this is a nice CD package, a CD digi-pack with some great artwork and well worth your money for both bands.

(8.5/10, Paul Maddison)

http://www.facebook.com/albatrossindia

http://www.myspace.com/vestalclaret

www.roadcrewrecords.in