Artist: Graveborne
Title: Pure Negativity
Type: Album
Label: Nykta Records

I have to admit that this album bored me to tears so it’s best you know that upfront. It wasn’t that anything about it was particularly crap or it was badly played, poorly produced; it just bored me rigid. The opening song is straight out of the mid era Dimmu Borgir style of black metal with tuneful riffing and harsh vocals. The increase in pace is very like Satyricon from their “Nemesis Divina” days. As I said there is nothing wrong with the song writing at all. The band even tries using different styles in a few places such as a death metal opening on “Nocturnal” with its blast. I’d even say the album has a catchy edge to it on the riffs especially.

My boredom on this album is compounded by the song lengths which are around the six minute mark. There are some similarities to Marduk’s slower material on various albums of theirs. “Aokigahara” lacks bite and ferocity especially when you have vocals snarling at you like a rabid wolf. Enslaved pops up on “Sacrilegious” boasting a hefty helping of melody and some morose style riffing that continues into “Dark matter”. This is likely to be my shortest review of the year as there really is very little to say about this album. Best song has to be “Sinister Moon” which has a very good black thrash riff incorporated into the song though the body of the song is similar to the rest of the album. Even after a couple of listens I still can’t get into this album which isn’t to say that you lot won’t. This has all the facets of decent black metal similar to Marduk mostly and if you like slower Marduk music then this is for you and you should check it out.

http://www.graveborne.com

Martin Harris

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