Having joined Adorior as a full-time member and a brief stint with Urn, Blackvenom has returned with a new Flame album, after almost six years since the last one. I’m holding in my hands the fruits of over half-a-decade of labour. The brand new album ‘March into Firelands’, a stunning gatefold vinyl released by ‘Primitive Reaction’ Records from Finland. The label has released some excellent stuff recently, including Armour and Neutron Hammer; the latter of which sounds vaguely similar to this right here.
Let me start by saying that Flame’s second full-length ‘March into Firelands’ is a massive step up from its predecessor ‘Into the Age of Fire’, which was also a solid release (released on Iron Pegasus). The band has become infinitely heavier, more powerful, adding further elements of death metal into their aggressive, hard hitting blackened old-school Thrash (ranging from the old Germans to an Australian 666 vibe). Flame waste no time in showing they mean business, the album starts out with short but devastating ‘Black Realm of Satanas’ then moves into the crushingly doomy beginnings of the (appropriately named) ‘Doomed…’. The album is generally very well balanced tempo-wise. Burning Horror, for example, has a superb groove to it, whilst sporting quite a simple 3-riff shuffle-writing loop with vocals in its beginnings… after a few loops, we get a excellent Razor-like run of riffs one after the other, until they leave behind their seemingly destined flow and become more than just a predictable bunch of glued-together riffs. These structures are filled with carefully placed leads and solos (the sound being reminiscent of early Destroyer 666). What I’m trying to say is that the song-writing really shines through. In ‘Rites of Endless Hatred’ we get some of the aggressive death metal mentioned earlier… a possible Adorior influence? The whole album is full of variation and keeps the listener asking for more.
As already concluded earlier, Flame take a massive leap forward with their second album. A release that most certainly deserves the gatefold format and the incredible artwork that comes with it. I would definitely recommend this album to lovers of the black/thrash/death genres. Give it a listen and you will soon pledge allegiance to the Flame!
http://www.myspace.com/flamefin
