BATTLELORE - Doombound CD
Napalm Records
Genre: Fantasy/Power Metal
Rating: 2/5
I can't say I'm a big fan of the whole fantasy Lord of the Rings type of thing put to music. As far as the books are concerned yeah I read them in high school and saw the movies which came out a few back. All of it was very well done except I thought the portrayal of the Frodo character was kind of "weak". But anyway I'm not here to discuss the reasons why I think an inhabitant of the Shire could have easily led a parade in San Francisco. I'm here to discuss the music. This Finnish band has been around for a decade and have released five full lengths total, this being their sixth. I thought their 2008 release, The Last Alliance, was pretty cool then again stuff like this runs parallel with the folky, viking, battle metal, gothic progressive schtick. There's two woman in BATTLELORE but they don't wear prom dresses. I guess you can call it medieval maiden-wear. For more on the wardrobe you'll have to go read Revolver's hottest chicks in Metal. The bottom line is that BATTLELORE are really epic sounding metal with harsh male and airy female vocals.
Doombound differs from their previous works in that it's an ambitious attempt at turning part of Tolkien's work, The Silmarillion or at least some of it, into a concept album. In my past I tried to read The Silmarillion but failed after a dozen pages. Good luck making that one a full length movie or trilogy. As far as this is concerned it's simply a fantasy metal release which touches onto various areas. The male vocals by Tomi Mykkänen sound as if he's been spending his free time singing in a deathcore act. As far as the female equation of Kaisa Jouhki goes well if you're into bands like WITHIN TEMPTATION or, even worse, EVANESCENCE then you get the idea. Kaisa also takes more lead vocal time which leads the release onto more clean sounding passages as opposed to the metal. As far as the quality of the performances, Doombound cannot be surpassed and there are some decent melodic death type cuts on here. But as a whole this is for fans, true fans that is. You can play it while reading the book.
Label: http://www.napalmrecords.com
Myspace: http://myspace.com/battleloremusic
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