Band:	Golem (ITA)
Album:	Black Era
Style:	Melodic death metal
Release date:	May 15, 2006
A review by:	Jeff

01. Ever Been To Hell
02. Ezechiel 25:17
03. Black Era
04. The Dark Passenger
05. Metal Holocaust
06. Like A Cage
07. World Of Lies
08. Murder God
09. Enemyself
10. Indifference
11. Spirits

Finally, "Black Era", the first official album of the Italian band Golem is out this year. I remember this band because we got on e of their CD some years before and my mate Deadsoulman had to write the review of their second EP, "Death Never Dies" which was, in the style, one of the best releases of the year 2002. So let's see if the band will confirm this time all the good feelings that we got in 2002.

At least, with "Black Era", Golem is confirming all their abilities to play good Gothenburg Metal. Plus, I cannot say that our four Italians tried to copy this or this band. They have their own style with for example, cool "old school" guitars soli that are all really nice and original. Their songs are good no doubt ("The Dark Passenger" for example is a perfect song of Gothenburg Death Metal), the riffs are powerful, the melodies are nice and the voice of the singer is a nice beautiful Death voice. Actually, "Black Era" doesn't lack of anything, except, originality. And that's the main problem of the release, the band did its maximum with this CD, that's obvious, but we got too many releases like this one and even if Golem (I must congratulate them one more time for this spirit) tried to do something really personal, it's hard to avoid any comparison with the 10000?.. others releases that we got during the last 2 years. If it's good, it's not new too? and that's a bit problematic for someone who is not a pure fan of this kind of music it's a bit boring at the end (the ultimate fans of this music, them, will probably find "Black Era", delicious).

From the sound to the booklet and even with their website, the work of this young band is just excellent. That's simple I didn't find any problems with this album, all and everything is professional as hell, and for a self-production this is simply better than a lot of signed releases. "Black Era" is a good album and just suffers (a bit) of the "too much" feeling that we can have nowadays with this kind of bands?

"Black Era" is a good release, and if you still can listen to Gothenburg Death Metal and Extreme Power Metal music, I really recommend you to check this album. A lot better than the last albums of some famous bands of the category, the fans of the style will be happy with this CD. The others, like me, will just regret that we have nothing really new in this "Black Era". It's good album but unfortunately it will not regenerate Gothenburg Death Metal?