Band:	DoomSword
Album:	Let Battle Commence
Style:	Doom metal
Release date:	September 29, 2003
Guest review by:	Njord

01. Heathen Assault (Burn Jorvik To The Ground)
02. In the Battlefield
03. Woden's Reign
04. Deathbringer
05. The Siege
06. Blood Eagle
07. My Name Will Live On

Doomsword is not one of the bands that come to mind when you think in doom metal, but this is easily explained: although the genre appears to be doom, Doomsword is more than that, it is a pure subgenre: epic doom metal. The lyrics talk about kings, conquests, victories, swords and similar themes, so much that we can take the band almost to a viking level. Luckily (or not, we never know) Doomsword carries a strong doom within, full of thirst for victory. It could be said also that the effort Doomsword put in their own epic music is similar to the funeral lament of Shape of Despair of to the mourning addiction of My Dying Bride.

About the album "Let Battle Commence" (released just one year after "Resound The Horn") it's maybe the best of the band so far. It's a mature, sentimental and very well played album. It comes to the ear that musical composition follows the lyrics, something that shows the need to express the message. Always with a vibrant chorus in the middle of the music - where the vocalist Deathmaster clean voice is clearly a mix between anger and pain - the music path is highly dependent of the tortuous guitar riffs, coming to note The Forger brilliant work in the bridges between chorus, solos and rest of the song. Talking about solos, they are, almost all, slow and clean, more melodic than fast. Concerning Wrathlord drums and Dark Omen bass, they aren't the main focus but they acomplish their mission, being highly dominated by doom sonority but not bringing anything new to the genre.

"My Name Will Live On" (the last track of the album and equally Doomsword's album of 2007) is for me the best music of the album and the one who shows best what I've said here. Just to finalize, "Blood Eagle" is my favourite track, because it's the most powerful and best played of the album (principally the final part). And that's it, an album recommended to epic doom lovers but also lovers of sword stories.