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Vampire: Vampire

25/02/14 || Ironpants

“Tales from the crypt”

So there! Century Media is becoming the coolest record label around at the moment, ever since they finally learned about who the real masters of the Internet are, namely Global Domination, they have continued to force feed us with releases for reviews. Besides that, they have also been scooping up the most interesting bands around, such as Watain, Necrowretch, In Solitude and Morbus Chron.
And now… Vampire!

Vampire is one of the hottest bands around at the moment, with semi-secret identities and printing demos on cassettes with a 200 limited edition that sold out in seconds and after they’ve been name-dropped on the most creddy underground blogs their efforts payed off and they sealed the deal with Century Media. Now the debut is here, and it is time to show if they are ghoulish enough to carry their reputation on their shoulders? Yeah, I said semi-secret identities, they use nicknames and pull their hair down over their faces on band pictures, but anyone who know how to operate Google can look up these guys in about ten seconds, but they have stated that their music is more important than who they are, so I will leave that subject out (…and also, I am too much of a lazy fuck to even look it up).

One of the most used terms in my reviews must be “old school death metal”? There, I said it once again, I will not use it any more in this review. You know why? This is “before school death metal” – no, not kindergarten metal, there’s nothing juvenile going on here. This has roots way before that word I will not say again. If I was 16 years old, I would call it “trve death metal”, but I am over 40 years old so… it´s fucken death metal, pure death metal. And it is fucken good death metal.

Yes, I’m dragged into the hype carousel at once, I feel my atrophied muscles tension up from the first note in the opening track “Orexis”, and even if it is nothing special with the song itself, it is a perfect opening track that is designed to introduce the band. Like to say “Hey fuckers! Here we are, buckle up and lets go!” And then you feel like you are being dragged behind a medieval horse carriage somewhere in a dark forest with the sound of galloping horse hooves stomping in the ground, while singer, Hand of Doom, is standing on the carriage preaching out his unholy hymns with that ghoulish voice.

From the second song “Howl from the coffin” and the third song “At midnight I’ll possess your corpse” I have already made up my mind… this is near perfect death metal and it is going to be a tough job pushing it down from my “Best of 2014” list. Just like Necrowretch they shove a twisted skeleton hand right through my rib cage, grab hold of my heart with a sturdy grip, and with a pulsating movement, they increase my heart rate slowly for every song.

With a sound copied from the underground days of metal, very analog and honest, they deliver song after song that invokes memories buried deep down in my cerebral cortex, and carries me around for some 40 minutes and it brings pleasure to my darkened soul that they are honoring the days of the old gods. The album is recorded in studio that mostly help pop artists and i read in a interview that they use accordions, xylophones and piano on the album. Accordions?? Before your mind strays into the fields of folk metal, I can assure you that they use them with responsibility, and I actually had to listen several times in headphones to actually pin them out in the mix, but they are there.

Besides already mentioned songs there are more hits to bang your head to in “Cellar grave vampire” and “Under the grudge” but all the songs follow a stipulated formula and never strays of the path, and you get your hard earned cash well invested in a blackened cauldron filled with fermented soup that can nourish your darkened soul for months to come. If I should mention some negative factors about the album, I could say that it gets a tiny bit repetitive and maybe the vocals have a quite crappy reverb attached to it, but in the long run it doesn’t really matter. You need this album as much as a vampire needs fangs.

Information
Released: 2014
Label: Century Media Records
Website: www.vampireofficial.com
Band
Hand of Doom: vocals
Black String: guitars
Command: bass
Ratwing: drums

Tracklist
01. Orexis
02. Howl from the coffin
03. At midnight I’ll possess your corpse
04. Ungodly warlock
05. The bestial abyss
06. Black deserts
07. Jaws of the unknown
08. The fen
09. Cellar grave vampire
10. Under the grudge

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