Synergy

If you never heard of them don't take their home-country as reference for their style because Extol are far from classical Black Metal.

They combine brutal metal with rocking and symphonic tunes and luckily they don't use bugging keyboards for it, just with two guitars, bass, drums and an outstanding vocalist! But in fact every member of this band is a fucking good musician, not only Peter's vocal ability, who also takes over the acoustic guitar parts.

The other guitar work is in a class of its own too. It consists of a lot different elements, heavy walls of guitars, black metal sounding pieces and dissonant rock stuff alternated through a lot speed changes. The album starts with "Grace For Succession" a hard attack with tempo changes between fast and mid-tempo passages and they also throw in playfull breaks when the vocals change between clean singing and harsh screaming like heaven and hell! But that's just the beginning, the second song couldn't be more beautiful and is one of my favourites on this album called "Paradigms" because Maria Solheim (Norwegian Pop/Rock singer) and Peter sing together on the chorus with their awesome voices! Extol just combine brutal hard-hitting technical metal with atmosphere and sweet harmonies, just go and get it!

You cant go wrong!