This is the fifth full length album from Vreid since they formed in 2004, and for those of you who don’t know your history, prior to that the members made up 2/3rds of the band Windir who disbanded following the death of their vocalist Valfar.
The intro to the first track ‘Arche’; sounds like something Burzum would produce, but way better! The track just oozes impressive tinny guitar solos and drum beats to knock the living crap out of the most corpsepainted, spiky-wristband wearing black metaller there is! The vocals really are something else; evil and Diabolic and most definitely brutal! The middle section has a lovely little guitar piece, but no sooner than a few seconds in, it punches you in the face again with the heavy and staunchy riffs. The guitars over the ongoing music toward the end are especially impressive and become more melodic to the very end of the track. ‘The Blood Eagle’ offers a perfect beat to have a good windmill to. (Do black metallers windmill or just stand there looking ‘cool’?) I particularly liked the marching drum beat in the middle section which fit perfectly leading onto heavier blackened guitar riffs and drum rolls.
Pushing on to a few other superb tracks off this impressive album are ‘The Sound Of The River’ first off with a relaxing acoustic piece which lasts a good 30 seconds, then in comes a cracking track that I’d never quite heard anything like before; intense and fuelled with awe-inspiring drum work and guitar riffs that were all over the place, but nevertheless worked brilliantly. A hefty chunk of the track didn’t even sound black metal, even still... amazing.
Another track I adored on this one was ‘Slave,’ with its melancholic intro and then with the surprising music change into brutalness. I liked the way this track was put together in view of the vocals too, the chorus black metal growl vocals and the verses have an almost goth 80s clean vocal style.
Last but definitely not least is ‘Then We Die’ which I cannot fault, the clean vocals on this remind me of ‘My Dying Bride’ the guitar melody monumental, the best melody on a whole.
Having honestly never listened to anything from Vreid I had to give this album a blast, and I wasn’t at all disappointed, as stated on their MySpace page, the albums production work is crystal clear. How they managed to put a 70/80s feel into black metal is really impressive, definitely one of my favourite black metal albums for a long time. There has been a tour scheduled for 2011, unfortunately only Norwegian dates announced, but watch this space.
http://www.myspace.com/thepitchblackbrigade
