|
Rating:
N/A |
Shredding The Envelope - The Call Of The Flames
30 November 2009
01. The Call Of The Flames
02. Standstill And Scream
03. Devil's Roadmap
04. Caravan Of Cannibals
05. Where Are My Real Brothers
06. Ruby Avalanche Red Flood
07. I Don't Want To Say Goodbye
08. The Wonder, The Curse, And The Crave
09. Shredding The Envelope
Heavy metal does not need to be pretentious or completely bizarre in order to sound fresh and exciting. While straight-forward hard-rock/heavy metal may seem to be one of the simpler genres of the metal spectrum, the fact that there's no room for gimmicks probably makes it the most difficult to achieve successfully; this is what makes The Call Of The Flames a very impressive album.
Sceptical is not strong enough a word to describe my feelings toward this album upon introduction to it, the name alone made me cringe a little bit, and although I probably won't ever cease to scoff at such a band name, the content makes it all worth it. First listen through this really came across as a musician whose virtuosity and technique outweighed his composition ability. While that still holds true matter how much I listen to it, it really has turned out to be a real grower.
So what does it sound like? Well, it's basically an amalgamation of rock n rolls finer qualities, a bit from every dirty little corner from punk, to southern rock all the way to thrash, heavy metal...and what's this? Do I hear a short flamenco bit? Relatively speaking it definitely has that sleaze rock feel to it much like that of Skid Row and Wednesday 13...but even that seems to be way off. I guess just picture a mix of the 2 previously mentioned bands with more vicious shredding, and occasionally a few varied elements mixed in.
The imperfections in this album do stand out from time to time. Beyond the clear hint made by the band/project title, it's obvious that this is album by a guitarist, for guitarists. Not necessarily a bad thing, right? Well, in a lot of cases no, but frankly in this case it does come across as a bit over-indulgent at times. Dave Reffett and the various big names he's brought in (Michael Angelo, George Lynch, Chris Poland etc) tend to go into "Dragonforce mode" occasionally (in other words, sacrifice a good flowing sound in exchange for unnecessary solos). Fortunately for me (and the people behind this neat little album), The Call Of The Flames worst moments still sound leaps and bounds better than Dragonforce at their best.
Nothing much more to say about this one - if you're a guitarist, you will probably love this one dearly, if not, you will probably be a little lost for some segments, much like myself.
|
|
Written on 04.02.2010 by
Doc Godin
Former EIC, now semi-retired.
|
|
|
|
|
Comments
|
|
| Comments: |
2
|
|
|
Users visited:
|
108 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| The cover looks almost disgusting... |
|
|
|
I'm surprised you didn't mention anything about Megadeth in this review. It sounds like Endgame V2.  Just listened to the album on their MySpace, and I'd have to say this stuff is very solid. You are right about the unnecessary soloing though... Much like Megadeth's latest release in that aspect too. |
|
Advertise on Metal Storm
|
Similar topics
Hits total: 3576 | This month: 11 |
