Monday, July 4, 2011

TROLLBAND - In the Heart of the Mountain CD review


TROLLBAND - In the Heart of the Mountain CD
Self Released
Genre: Blackened Folk
Rating: 2/5

Did I not say last year, while reviewing another "troll" themed band, that Troll Metal was going to be the next new sub genre. Hey look you got all these Paganfest influenced fans/musicians out there who know they're not Nordic vikings but like blackened folk as well as melodic death metal or battle metal. So what else is there? Orcs? Nope too Tolkien and besides it's been done before by BATTLELORE. So its time for some trolls to come out from under the bridges and form bands. Actually I think all that troll stuff in folklore was really about homeless people back then. So here we have TROLLBAND who hail from Vancouver, Canada which is supposedly the North American capital for trolls or at least bands who like to mimic other people's sound and style. That's the riff from SABBATH's "Children of the Grave" opening your cut "We Live" until you do a little reworking with it. I'm still replaying "Nidhoggr" over and over to see which BLUE OYSTER CULT song that it's strummed intro was borrowed from. OK maybe not BOC but somewhere?When it gets into full on blackened mode it would be like throwing a dart at a board covered in Norwegian BM band names. TROLLBAND is actually a troll duo with Sam Levitt on bass and vocals with Matt Courtemanche on guitar. Everything else musically provided is computerized. They use plenty of sequenced symphonic orchestrations on here which means this won't transplant well into a live show situation. On a whole it's average as far as battle metal goes since it covers all the bases musically. TROLLBAND fails to inject something which hasn't been done before to death by others who do it better.

Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/trollbandhordes


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