Armoured Wolves

Let’s be honest right up front, Dead Raven Choir is not a “brutal”, “grim”, death/black metal band. DRC is more about noise or aural art for art’s sake. If you’re looking for the newest big thing in black metal, look elsewhere please.

The album starts with "November", which sets the stage for most of the songs on this work. Light strums by acoustic instruments accompanied by wandering gothic like vocals. There seems to be very little real structure or composition, it comes off as random jazz like picking on acoustic guitars and banjos with the odd double bass sound jumping in. There are even a few violin twangs to contend with.

The first song to really stand out is "Waiting Around to Die". This has the thin distorted Ulver like guitars and more typical black metal growls, but the song quickly wanders into strange screeching losing all real sense of a structured song. Toward the end of the song it’s just droning vocals, distortion, and high range guitar picks. "Highway Kind" picks up right where the last song left off with more distorted guitars, but the vocals are much clearer in this song. There seems to be an attempt here to make a proper tune, as there are some simple repeatable guitar phrases. After that the Album returns to its formula of random acoustic pickings with accompanying pseudo-goth vocals.

You have to give DRC credit for their body of work and vision, but you don’t have to buy it or like it. This is for noise/art/neofolk fans only I’m afraid. Smolken just doesn’t give the listener the tools to key into what he’s trying to express. It seems almost too personal to be appreciated at times, like some really badly written personal poetry.