Amulet’s influence is with bands like Witchfinder General. With this in mind, I have to come immediately to the stellar production, it sounds familiar and homely. It was mastered by Jaime Gomez Arellano, this is the guy who did the recent Ghost debut album, and thus ‘Cut the Crap’ leads with an organic and vintage sound. The actual recording was Engineered and mixed by the bands lead singer Jamie Leven.
So on to the vocals themselves, all I can do is applaud them time after time; these are pretty remarkable and surprising. One cannot fail to be impressed with the opening tune ‘Running Out of Time’, but I find one of the four gems to be ‘The Hangman’, with lyrics stating to “face him and die”…indeed, and there are plenty of opportunities to clap along adding some fist raising moments in the chugging juggernaut, especially the backing guitar to the guitar solo. It almost appears as if Amulet have written these tunes with live shows in mind, a very commendable piece of foresight. Closing tune ‘Sign of the High Priest’ has a real vintage kick drum and chug to the guitar intro, reverb led with the tone mightily infectious (think Cirith Ungol). Moving on to the breakdown in the middle section which starts to lean towards early Sabbath and Mercyful Fate’s debut effort, there is a cloak of evil ever present over this recording, there is just something haunting from the way the recording is captured and executed.
Amulet bestow all the gems from the godfathers of NWOBHM and metal in general, this demo is very much true and very professional, this is certainly a band to look out for in the future, now raise the horns…rejoice in halcyon days of summer, dance around naked, whatever floats your boat, but don’t forget that this is something special \m/.
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Paul Maddison
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