Band:	Dewfall
Album:	V.I.T.R.I.O.L.
Style:	Extreme power metal
Release date:	January 2009
A review by:	Bas

01. Free Entrance To Hell
02. Forever Ghost
03. Skeleton's Rising
04. In The Shadow Of Ragnarok
05. Black Solitude
06. Ravens Of The Frost
07. The Secret Passage
08. The Serpent's Cave
09. Comfort Of A Night Rain

Extreme power metal? most of the time I just can't understand how so many people can like stuff like Children Of Bodom, Norther, Kalmah and Wintersun that much. They've always seemed extremely overrated and dull to me. The songwriting is really uninspired most of the time, the solos are usually fast but apart from that completely unspectacular, most of the time the refrains are just annoying and the vocals are usually absolutely horrendous. Yet surprisingly another extreme power metal band (apart from some songs by Eternal Tears Of Sorrow) that I actually enjoy found their way to my CD-player. So who is this band that managed the unexpected? DewFall started out in 2003 and released a first demo in 2004. V.I.T.R.I.O.L. is their first full-length and was produced by the four band members without the help of a label.

As opposed to the bands I mentioned at the beginning of this review, DewFall hardly use keyboard at all on this album, instead their power metal is mainly guitar based with a lot of tasty riffs and some well-placed solos and has a bit of an "oldschool spirit". This music is then infused with a couple of death metal riffs and drumming parts spread over the album, some growls and grunts and even a few black metal screams. Apart from the bassist/extreme vocalist the rhythm guitarist also does some clean singing, usually he sings in a medium range (some parts are comparable to Joacim Cans from Hammerfall) but he's also capable of some higher parts. For his age (he's 17) his singing is quite solid, but it would be even better if he could get some more emotion into his clean parts.

Generally this certainly isn't a perfect album though. For one some of the long songs could have been shorter, also there's a sever lack of catchy choruses - this is biggest point of criticism - and the songs don't all live up to the same quality. Some songs like Black Solitude are just awesome, but songs like Free Entrance To Hell (the opening song) and Skeletons Rising (this song has a rather lame chorus unfortunately) really bring the average down again.

Yet despite these points of criticism V.I.T.R.I.O.L. is a very good album. There's a couple of really great riffs around, the songwriting is solid, the music is rich in variation and there are a lot of different influences to explore. The musicians know hot to play and the whole CD is pretty cool to listen to - even though I didn't like the album on first listen, but a second and third spin quickly changed my mind! I think that they aren't quite there yet, this being their first album after all, but I'm definitely keeping my eyes and ears open for a second DewFall release. In the future these guys might just put out an amazing extreme power metal record.