The last release I reviewed by this band ‘Undead in Leather’, is a fine effort and very much reigniting the UK scene with a hefty dirty approach akin to the old German thrash scene. On ‘Black Sacrament’ there is definitely a darker presentation with some gnarly vocals and some guitar leads that are simply great.
The first couple of tracks fit with a thrash theme, it’s not until ‘Cathedrals of Despair’ for me that the sinister influences come out to play, there’s a certain element of black metal both in some of the riffs and the vocals, later on you also get some death metal too. However, this is an album that cannot be pigeon holed into the normal sub-genre that everyone loves to do, it’s simply an evil sounding metal album that improves in both complexity and quality as each track subsequently comes at you.
One critique would be the high hat/cymbal is too much on time with the snare drum on some of the faster tracks, but that’s only when you listen on weaker sound systems you pick this up. Crank this on a big system and it sounds cool. The production itself sounds raw, aggressive, but far from dated and actually has a touch more feel and warmth than some self-releases I have heard recently.
‘Black Mass’ is a cool track, likely to be my favourite as I spin that the most. ‘Event Horizon’ is a musical journey, people my use the word epic, I would call it a thinking man’s tune, there’s plenty of atmosphere. The final track is a real indication of the direction with a cover of Venom’s ‘Countess Bathory’ and this is quite close to the original, very raw in fact.
All in all, this is a release to savour and enjoy, its raw enough to have a real underground appeal but written well enough to be a bigger album release, it crosses both paths. Vindicator (UK) have real promise, a real talent for adding a lot of influences without self-labelling themselves. In fact if you like your acronym’s then try and figure what NWOBHBDDTM means, as it’s a perfect description even if a current in band yarn.
(8/10 Paul Maddison)
Leave a Reply