Elexorien

What a curiosity. I gave up on this album a couple times, and I'm now coming back to make sense of it.

This is the full length? This sounds worse than the demo that everyone was sure they’d surpass in every way. Really it does. I kid you not, the demo sounds ten times better. The production values are pretty airy. The guitar has a very crunchy sound, which reminds me of my old practice amp. Besides that, the vocals are much too loud.

To make sure I wasn't just imagining this, I played both versions of Rising of the Storm for my brother, and asked him which one sounded like a demo, and which one sounded like a full length. As I thought, he guessed this version was the demo.

The production is all around uneven. The vocals at the front of the music, the keyboard and one guitar at the back, and the drums and the other guitar somewhere in between.

The songs seem to reflect a good deal of unevenness too. Despite the female vocalist being exceptional on a technical level, and having a very beautiful voice, the singing is just not fit for this kind of music. It's like it was spliced together from two separate songs. That's not to say another style of singing wouldn't work, but this certainly doesn't.

An example of where this really sticks out is Sméagol (the band also loses points for Lord of the Rings references), starting with a pumping drum part, with the keyboard following close behind. The crunchy guitar comes in with what you'd expect to be a raging high scream of death - but then comes the flowing, soft voice. Somewhere in the middle of the song there is a blastbeat, and again, it really makes no sense. Like I'm listening to two separate songs at once. The overly loud mixing of the vocals contributes to this as well. Also, singing lines like "We'll crush the enemy with our bare hands" is the last line that would be remotely appropriate for such a soft, delicate voice and style.

Most of the new songs are not as good as the previously released songs. They're mostly what you’d expect. Fast drumming - which I enjoyed because the drummer spices the parts up pretty nicely, some mock symphonic keyboards, occasional solid melodic riffs (which cover Viking, death, black and power metal stylistic flairs) The harsh vocals are unimpressive, and vary in harshness, making it sound like the guy is trying too hard.

Sméagol is also the thing that comes closest to being epic. Not just for being the longest (and at 5:30, that's still not very epic) but for having the most parts and variation. That, along with Rising of the Storm, and The Disciples of Night Under Starless Sky are the best songs. And that's pretty sad considering two of those were on the demo - with better production.

In closing, I'll say that the praise of the demo was somewhat excessive, but I still enjoyed it a lot. So naturally, this was a hell of a disappointment. I figured, if the demo sounded that good, what could go wrong? Apparently a lot. Apparently, this band was misfortunate enough to have a producer who was completely incompetent, or for some insane reason they actually thought this sounded as good or better than the demo. Either one just blows my mind. Of course, even if an incompetent producer is to blame on one level, they still take the blame for a number of other mess ups. Perhaps they still need time to mature ...