Band:	Vingdar
Album:	Reign Of Ruin
Style:	Black metal
Release date:	2004
A review by:	Jeff

01. From Embers To Ashes
02. Crowning Of Damnation
03. Oath Of The Starless Skies
04. Hidden
05. The All-Enlightened
06. The Risen
07. Glorified
08. When The Star Fall
09. Apokalipticon

Vingdar is a young band and they are not very well known in France unfortunately. Unfortunately, but why? Well in fact just because the band shows us again, through their first album "Reign Of Ruin", that there is a great potential for the Black Metal France. Vingdar, two years after their first demo, "Ablaze With Hate", proves that they are in the list of the most promising Black Metal bands from France.

"Reign Of Ruin" is a damn powerful album and it's really surprising to see all the power that this band can gives through this release. Musically, "Reign Of Ruin" is already very mature, that's surprising to see how the band knows to play a perfect music in its own style.
The music of Vingdar is very fast and has a strong impact in your mind and the good thing with this band is that you could find a mix of different style in Black Metal.
Musically, you could find some influences of Dark Funeral for the rapidity of the songs, Burzum for the general atmosphere or even some Dissection for the technical of the drums and the guitars riffs. Really the technical level of this guys is surprising, the drummer for example can keep a really fast tempo, blasting his drums like hell but however this tempo never suffer of any rhythm problems, really he is impressive.
All the songs of this album are all very catchy, dark and oppressive but always catchy, due to the melodies which are well written and then very nice. Yes even for a very brutal Black Metal band, that's easy to listen to the melodies, and the music of the band is in the case very melodic and that's important I think.
The production is also very good, there is no problems with the sound of this band, which is clean but however in the pure tradition of the Black Metal band albums recording. Only the booklet very minimalist without any lyrics, pictures etc, sucks in my opinion. And if I must talk about one another problem on this album, I should talk about the length?. Only 32 mins for 9 tracks? This is not very serious. We don't buy cd for only 30mins of music I'm sorry. Luckily the quality of the album is here to hide this fault.

"Reign Of Ruin" is a great and impressive start for this young band which will be soon I'm sure if it in the top list of the Black Metal bands made in France. If you want good Black Metal I really recommend this band which prove again that we know how to do this music in France. Have a look on this album, it deserve it.