Album Reviews : Angel Blake – The Descended

Listening to this release, I simply assumed that these guys had been around for a while, mainly because they have a very solid sound that you’d think was developed over a number of years. However when I looked at their discography I was very surprised to see this is only the band’s second album.

The first thing that really stood out to me is the amount of catchy choruses throughout this album. Anywhere But Here, When All The Lights Are Out and Defenseless in particular have fantastic choruses that I think would really go off live. Musically, the album isn’t anything great. There are some great riffs and the drums sound very powerful, but it’s nothing that hasn’t been done before. Bands like Thunderstone and Symphorce have pulled off similar styles/feels with much more power than these guys. The vocals are where Angel Blake shine. The vocals range in style from lower, more doom-styled, to higher power metal screams, to very harsh screams and death growls (which sound great on the title track). All of these different styles are done with the same high quality and it never feels like they’ve changed style just for the sake of having variety.

As a whole, the album isn’t very consistent unfortunately. The album opens brilliantly and the first four tracks are very entertaining, and like I said before, I think they would sound even better live. But after that, the album dies down a bit. Alone slows the album pace down a bit with much slower vocals and less focus on catchy riffs, but to put it simply, it’s a boring track that drags out for far too long. Wasn’t Meant To Last goes back to the faster, catchy style of the opening few tracks but isn’t quite pulled off as well. The clean interlude, In Silence – Augerum, isn’t very interesting (which is a shame because I’m usually a huge fan of shorter interlude tracks like this). Perhaps if it was half the length and just the intro to a full song it would have been better, but again, it drags out for too long and really slows the album down. The album picks up after this with the title track being one of the best on the album, followed by Silent Voice which is simply another slightly boring song, and ending with the more doom orientated You’ll Never Need To Feel Again which sounds phenomenal when cranked up loud.

My advice: rip the album to your PC and delete the boring songs, because the other ones are bloody great. This isn’t a release to judge just from listening to a few songs. Listen to the whole thing and pick and choose which tracks to listen to. Because those tracks are well worth sorting through the below average material to find. 6.3/10

For fans of: Symphorce, Thunderstone

Band: Angel Blake
Album: The Descended
Year: 2008
Genre: Heavy Metal
Label: Dynamic Arts Records
Origin: Sweden
http://www.myspace.com/angelblakeonline

Tracklisting:
1. Anywhere But Here
2. Defenseless
3. Again
4. When All The Lights Are Out
5. Alone
6. Wasn’t Meant To Last
7. In Silence – Augerum
8. The Descended <- reviewers choice
9. Silent Voice
10. You’ll Never Need To Feel Again