Artist: Thulcandra
Title: Under a Frozen Sun
Type: Album
Label: Napalm Records

Following on from last year’s sterling debut effort, Germany’s Thulcandra continue their homage to all things Unanimated and Dissection. The former is covered on this album with ‘Life Demise’ from the 1995 release ‘Ancient God of Evil’. Continuing on this path, Thulcandra continue to shine and produce thoughtful blackened death metal, mainly in the Swedish vein. ‘In Blood and Fire, the album opener, is a real epic number. Sometimes you get immersed into a song or album so much you kind of lose where you are in the world, this is what I find with this album and band, I cannot merely play this in the background, you have to intently listen to work out each little piece of intricate detail in the arrangements.

The production, once again is solid, the levels are balanced perfectly, on the slower songs the band are however in danger of copying themselves and others, something that can quite easily be done, in fact I read somewhere that one of the big four was guilty of this at one stage, I rest my case....it can be easily done, but the album title track does indeed sound like an infamous Dissection number....sing along if you will. If you can get over the similarities, here lies a rewarding experience. Take ‘Ritual of Sight’ for example, there is a harsher element to these tones, but the band manage to rein these in and control with majestic melody and dreaming melancholy, like what you hear in some Primordial tracks, that earthy tone, almost steeped in old historical battles and folklore.

Thulcandra make no apologies for their love of a couple of bands, there comes a point, especially by album number two, you do want to hear more than a mere tribute to two great bands, something that thankfully has improved since ‘Fallen Angels Dominion’, at least there is someone out there who can tackle this style with ease and a touch of class. I still think this is a great album of melodic death/black metal and some of the artists enjoying favour at the moment in this genre would be utterly destroyed by the song writing talent that these German’s have in bucket loads, you can do no wrong by adding this to your collection.

http://www.myspace.com/thulcandrametal

Paul Maddison

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