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Grimlord - Dolce Vita Sath-an As review



Reviewer:
5.5

1 user:
5
Band: Grimlord
Album: Dolce Vita Sath-an As
Release date: 2009


01. Dolce Vita Sath-anas
02. When The Heads Are Going Down
03. Oh! My King
04. Shade Of Wrath Angels
05. Ground Zero
06. Dissolution Of Eternity
07. Ancient Land Of Ys
08. Avericious Scavenger/Panth Of Lash
09. Lamentation Sword

Of course dear reader you've already seen the band name and album title and shot a glance at the album cover. Now know that the band comes from Poland and make an inspired guess what style the band is playing. That's right, 80's heavy/power metal!

For me it's always interesting to receive new CDs by bands I already reviewed before. This is also Grimlord's case, whose debut reached me a bit over a year and a half ago. At the time I considered the album great instrumentally, yet considered it to be spoiled by the sub par vocal work. Perhaps the three guys took my opinion (which was most probably shared by many other critics) seriously because while the first three tracks on Dolce Vita Sath-an As still contain vocals (and Mr. Barth La Picard who also handles guitars and synth didn't get better since the debut), the rest of the album is instrumental.
Indeed, the first third of the album features vocals and then all of a sudden it's followed up by 6 power metal instrumentals.

At first the change of thought seems appropriate. After all the vocals were ok on the first track (which is in my opinion by far the best song on the album) and then got a lot worse on the second and even worse on the third track. However after the first of the instrumentals, "Shade Of Wrath Angels" - my favourite of the instrumentals - is over things go downhill.

The band is trying very hard to make their music interesting and rich in variation, and often they actually succeed! But roughly half an hour of slow, sometimes balladesque, power metal that desperately tries to be progressive is about twenty-five minutes longer than it should be. Especially if it soon starts to sound rather dry and uninspired.

While the members of Grimlord know how to play their instruments it would do them a world of good if they'd focus more on dynamic song structures than on emotionless instrumental finesse. Also while Bath La Picard's singing really doesn't live up to his guitar work, it would be even much better to just add a somewhat capable vocalist to the line-up then dropping the vocal lines completely. It's not without reason that the majority of bands use vocalists.


Rating breakdown
Performance: 8
Songwriting: 5
Originality: 6
Production: 6

Written by Bas | 02.12.2009





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