Artist: Dewfall
Album: V.I.T.R.I.O.L.
Type: Album
Label: Self Released
Wooooooooooah. I was not ready for this! Dewfall are an Italian band formed back in 2004, but little known outside of Italy and erm...the former Yugoslavian states it would seem, oddly enough. Looking at the cover art, with a carriage being pulled through a darkened forest by a griffin and a...erm....well, a wolf with bat-wings, I formed the early impression that this would be some kind of sub-Rhapsody-esque foray into sword and shield / slay the dragon / bum your mates style power metal nonsense. Dewfall may have a spirit that's more old school than a Will Hay marathon, but they have plenty of new tricks up their sleeve.
This is a seriously excellent album. I jest you not, I haven't heard a true heavy metal album that has had me so impressed since I first heard The Lord Weird Slough Feg round about 2000. In simplistic terms, this is the album that Iron Maiden would have made if they had formed in 1997. Brilliant, sprawling, epic heavy metal anthems, with po-faced lyrics dealing with bad memories (“Skeletons Rising”), Ragnarok (“In The Shadows of The Ragnarok”) and the ultimate fate of the soul (“Free Entrance to Hell”). This is an album that is a paradox; it seamlessly melds metal styles together, while all the time also being a collision of these styles. Maiden and Priest riffs rebound within each song, while clean, melodic vocals give way effortlessly to shrieking, almost black metal howls. Elsewhere, the simple, clean pounding drums give way to the extremes of the modern drum schools. Jaunty, Celtic flourishes and rousing, almost jubilant vocal sections combine to produce an album so unashamedly metal that it makes anything that Judas Priest have put out since “Defenders of the Faith” seem like Coal Chamber by way of comparison. This is simply brilliant, breath taking stuff.
All the best metal albums are about atmosphere as much as they are about musical dexterity, and V.I.T.R.I.O.L. is no exception. Whether moving through the blackened thrash of “Ravens of the Frost” or the Maiden-meets-Doomsword gallop of “The Secret Passage,” there is an earnest, heartfelt quality to the music that is just impossible to fake and even more impossible to resist. Sure, this stuff will put a smile on your face, but Dewfall are serious as hell about this metal, and it's that commitment to their art that has made this such an amazing, expansive piece of work. So sure, the production could do to be a little more powerful, but on what I suspect is a shoe string budget, it does the trick and it doesn't sound cheap. On the other hand, the lack of studio bells and whistles only serves to make this sound even more hard working and authentic. This album then is a minor marvel – combining the best of old and new metal while jettisoning the extraneous crap that clutters up the modern metal market. Metal isn't about how many bad tattoos you have, how many band-of-the-moment patches you sew onto your denim or what officially endorsed spirit you drink, it's about how much you love the music. This is an album that is one long love-song to the spirit of metal. I could kiss it, I really could. Stunning, self-assured, idiosyncratic brilliance.
http://www.dewfallband.com
http://www.myspace.com/dewfall
Chris Davison
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