Here’s a novelty, a band that isn’t from Sweden. Okay, they’re in the same general geographic area, calling Norway home, but unlike many from that fine nation they don’t don the corpse paint and scream, rather they ply their trade firmly in the realms of retro hard rock. I know it’s a label that is thrown at far too many acts these days, with some folks seemingly thinking all you need to qualify for the title is a pair of flared jeans and some sideburns, and indeed, it is a pigeon hole that can be all too limiting for some. However, on their facebook page Dunbarrow do list their influences as “1968-1973”, a time gone by that they are far too young to have lived through, and even I can only just remember the latter half of that period (goes away, check wrinkles and grey hair in mirror, dies a little inside!), so it is a label that is fair.

That this Nordic five piece stay true to their influences is instantly apparent with the opener on ‘II’, ‘On Your Trail’ having a sound from days gone by, not just in the stripped back sound, but also in the non-intrusive production style that harkens to an age of warm valve driven amps and delicate stretchable tape rather than the gigabyte powered computer and hard drive age of today. This is a sound that could easily have been produced in Swansea by Budgie forty years ago, rather than Haugesund in the twenty-first century. This proto-metal sound is even more apparent in ‘Please Let Me Be’, a bluesy opening building up in pace to a solid chugging riff before dropping again at the end of the song with slow and drawn out guitar solo that seems to have fallen through some tear in the fabric of seventies space-time to reappear in 2018.

Darker sentiments come to the fore in ”Weary Lady’, the pace dropping, and foreboding beats and lyrics that hint at evolving into full on doom permeating the track, the master of the form Iommi being an obvious influence on the guitar work, the band like so many others standing on the shoulders of this particular rock giant. Another element to this early doom sound is the way that the band incorporate fantasy and horror into their lyrics, ‘Ode To The Moon’ having a heritage that shares the DNA of Black Widow (‘Come To The Sabbath’ is an all time classic that all fans of metal and modern occult rock should know by heart), a sound they build on with ‘The Wolf’, ‘The Demon Within’, and especially in ‘Witches of the Woods’, the clean, distortion free vocals of Espen Anderson telling a tale that could be the outline to horror movie of yesteryear.

Unlike many contemporaries, Dunbarrow do not unnecessarily try to draw out their music with excessive repetition, overly indulgent solos, or dragging feedback at the end of every track, so despite a pace that is considerably less than frenetic, the nine tracks of ‘II’ clock in at barely thirty five minutes. This, however, is not in any way of a sign of lacking material, rather it is a sign of the confidence the band have in what they play that they don’t feel the need to pad things out or pile on the distortion to sound heavy, and for that, they can only be admired. I think I’ll have to seek out ‘I’, and if they stick to form, I’ll definitely be looking forward to ‘III’.

(7.5/10 Spenny)

https://www.facebook.com/Dunbarrow

https://dunbarrow.bandcamp.com/album/dunbarrow-ii