Artist: Vallenfyre
Title: A Fragile King
Type: Album
Label: Century Media

Grief is a complex beast, and it affects everybody differently. When Paradise Lost’s Greg Mackintosh lost his father to cancer in 2009, his manner of dealing with the grief process was to create. Finding release in returning to his roots, so began the healing process through the medium of old school, raw, Death, Crust and Doom. As time passed, and the music took shape, Greg decided to share what was initially a very personal vision with some friends. Friends like Paradise Lost band mate Adrian Erlandsson, and Hamish Glencross of My Dying Bride, Scoot from Doom, and long standing friend Mully. The outcome was the birth of the death/doom supergroup Vallenfyre, and something that started as a cathartic process, was gathering momentum into something rather bigger.

When I first heard this project was happening, my guess was we would end up with a band that sounded like Paradise Lost circa 1993, and that was the image I had in my head before hitting play on this one. As much as I am a fan of that era, what actually came out of the speakers when I pressed play was more than I could have hoped for. There is old Paradise Lost in there, and I mean Frozen Illusion old, along with Bolt Thrower and Hellhammer. From the first note, this sounds twisted, imposing and rather epic! Opening track ‘All Will Suffer’ starts in a slow and methodical manner, before the beast is unleashed amid a determined downtuned riff dripping with distortion. The production on this is clearly excellent, yet the overall sound is not a million miles from what you would expect in the old days of bootlegged traded tapes, which is undoubtedly the exact intended effect.

Rather than bring in another vocalist to sing on what is a very personal album, Mackintosh decided to handle that himself. Sounding like Nick Holmes around 1989/1990, Greg delivers a powerful and aggressive performance, however it does lack flexibility. That being said, this sort of material was never intended for anyone with a massive vocal range, it’s all about raw, guttural response. Along with providing the voice of Vallenfyre, Greg also shares lead guitar duties with Hamish Glencross, so the lead riffs and breaks when they come are in safe hands. The drums are handled by the ever versatile and reliable Adrian Erlandsson, a man I once drunkenly baited by telling him that he was nowhere near as good a drummer as his brother, an act for which I would now like to publicly apologise. As ever Adrian fits into the mix here perfectly, driving things forward during the harsher more death numbers, such as ‘Humanity Wept’, and during the slower more reflective doom laden moments, such as ‘Seeds’ and ‘The Grim Irony’.

I’ve been excited about Vallenfyre ever since I heard that this album was in the making, but I have to say it has well and truly surpassed all expectations I had of it. This is an album from back when there was still life in Death Metal, before everyone got their claws in and bled the creativity from it, before making music was so simple that pretty much anyone could get together, call themselves a band and record an album. There was a time when it took a lot of dedication, time and talent to make yourself heard, and this is an album that comes straight from that time and with that mentality. In listening to the lyrics on here, and reading the extensive notes provided, one thing that is abundantly clear is the love and reverence that Greg Mackintosh had for his father, the fragile king of the title. This album is a superb tribute from a loving son to his father. It’s often true that we are most resilient, most resourceful and most creative when we are at our lowest, and that has certainly been the case here. I think I’ve found my album of the year.

http://www.vallenfyre.co.uk/

Lee Kimber

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