Artist: Albatross
Album: Dinner Is You
Type: EP
Label: Demonstealer Records

This is the four track debut EP from Indian metal band Albatross. It’s a concept piece, telling a story of cannibalism and the Kuru disease. Kuru is a degenerative neurological disease that was first recorded in Papua New Guinea. It’s believed that the disease spread through the local tribes due to their endo-cannibalistic funeral practices, whereby the relatives of the deceased eat the corpse. If you want to know more you can look it up like I had to. Albatross are very open about their admiration for the concept albums of King Diamond and the Danish icon’s influence is plain to see throughout Dinner Is You. It’s there in the riffing and song structures, it’s there in the spooky/funny lyrics (“Maybe you’ll be roasted? Maybe you’ll be stew?”) and it’s there in the vocals which occasionally even try to replicate the King’s stratosphere exploring style. Additionally King Diamond guitarist Andy LaRoque has handled the mastering duties for this EP and the excellent lead work present gives more than a casual nod in his direction.

There is a lot to like about Albatross but they are a long way from being the finished article as yet. The three main songs here all work with very similar tempos and a stuttering riffing style that means the songs are never really let off the leash. You wait for that exhilarating injection of pace but it never fully arrives. The lengthy last track, ‘Among The Cannibals’ in particular really struggles to hold it together and keep the attention of the listener. Possibly the band have given too much precedence to the lyrics and the story they are trying to tell over the natural flow of the songs. So Dinner Is You isn’t up to the standards of Abigail...but then neither is anything King Diamond has produced in recent memory. There is certainly enough promise here to suggest that I should start expanding my limited knowledge of what the Indian metal scene has to offer.

http://www.myspace.com/albatrosshorror