Band:	Infernal Angels
Album:	Midwinter Blood
Style:	Melodic black metal
Release date:	September 28, 2009
A review by:	Bas

01. Prologus Odii
02. Melody Of Pain
03. Midwinter Blood
04. Coronation Of Dark Victory
05. Conquering The Throne Of Sin
06. A New Era Is Coming
07. Tutto Quel Che Rimane
08. Sangue
09. Inesorabile
10. Epilogus Humanitatis

I've been thinking a little (yeah, I do that sometimes). It's been quite a while since I've written a really nasty mean review.

Unfortunately Infernal Angels aren't gruesome enough to be ripped apart for the sake of it, but on the other hand the most positive thing I can say about them is that their best songs are average. They play melodic black metal - a genre which, curiously enough, almost always spawns average music - with some death metalish vocals added in the mix. Several acoustic parts which I admit to be very listenable, if not for the bad clean singing, are strewn throughout the album.

The drumming is great, I give them that. That's pretty much it however. So if Midwinter Blood doesn't have many good traits I can write about, what is there to make it not-good? Let's start with the riffs. They're repetitive. Furthermore they're simple as hell (yeah that's where Satan lives, but it doesn't mean being simple as hell is a good thing) and a tad repetitive. While the 'rawer' riffs are repetitive, they're definitely still listenable; the really melodic riffs on the other hand are simply annoying though (on 'Inesorabile' for example). The best riffs on the album give me the feeling I've heard them before; they're also repetitive.

What's worse than uninspired guitar work is that the songwriting usually suffers from the same problem. Although there are good approaches too (the first song 'Prologus Odii' isn't bad at all), most of the tracks seem watered down by Atlantic proportions. A slightly rawer production could have helped too.

Actually this review turned out a lot harsher than I originally intended. The problem isn't that any of the properties of this release are horrible by themselves, actually there is not a single really horrible thing about it. On the other hand not a single attribute of the CD is great either, except for the drumming which is quite good. The drumming by itself isn't enough though. I'm sorry Infernal Angels, but the thing is that black metal fans have more than enough bands to choose from and in the end you just don't cut it.

PS: The outro sucks.