Metal Reviews

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I'm a pretty big Vried fan and was disappointed slightly in this. It's a different sound than what they usually do and I guess I just haven't grown to like it. Not a bad album by any means but I'll be listening to ones like PBB over this.

Also a big Vreid fan, but disagree with the rating of this album. I would have given it somewhere around 72, because I dislike their delvings into prog. I really did not like the clean vocals in this album at all, nor the "proggy" bits that infected almost half the songs on the album.

As someone who loved pre-V Vreid, I would written something at least on the songs that did not have clean vocals or proggy bits, which made up about half the album. Even though 4 songs on the album had those horrid clean vox and prog bits, I feel like you mostly left out the commentary on the other 5 songs minus Arche. Arche (overall great song, I agree), The Blood Eagle, Wolverine Bastards (these three were probably the best songs on the album), Welcome to the Asylum and Then We Die were all great songs. So would have been cool to read more about impressions those five songs/evolution of Vreid's actual black metal sound that were more of a continuation from where Milorg left off.

That said, go listen to Milorg first, then the rest of Vreid's discography as well as Windir right now. I command thee! Neither will tickle your prog rock testes, though...they are far better than that shit

Kraft is by far the best, probably b/c it sounds the most like Windir... I also enjoy Milorg and PBB every now and then. So if this is your first experience with Vreid, well you have a lot to hear.

As far as this album goes, I might pick it up. However, from the few samples I've heard, I'll put it at the bottom of my 'to get' list.

To be honest, while I enjoyed the album I am not entirely convinced that I want to go out of my way to listen to the earlier albums or Windir. Good stuff, but not something I am going to remember in a few years.

If they bring the cowbell into it, I'll bump it up 10 pts.

This is nothing like Windir or Kraft. Those are near-classics in my mind.

Yeah the reviewer obviously needs to listen to more black metal since he mentioned the album of FAGGOTCORE band Abigail Williams as his favorite black metal record alongside Watain. Two bands who should never be used in the same sentence.

Seriously kid. Go listen to some proper black metal before you write black metal reviews.

Not favorites at all. Just 2 good albums from last year that take melodic black metal into a more song oriented direction.

By the way, you said Abigail Williams and Watain in the same sentence.

And if you honestly have a problem with me calling Abigail Williams black metal then I would reevaluate what that term constitutes, because this Vreid album sounds closer to Between the Buried and Me than Mayhem. I personally don't care about that, but Vreid is truthfully about as tr00 as a 13 year old twink with his balls inbetween his legs.

First you admit that you've never listened to Vreid before this album and refuse to listen to anything else they've done (which is all black metal, I assure you), then you go rambling on about "tr00ness." Seriously, anyone that throws that "tr00" and "kvlt" shit around trying to mock bands anymore is just sad...it's gotten old, man. Real old.

I still don't understand how you can go around making such broad generalisations without even listening to Vreid other than one album, and apparently only paying attention to four songs. Very good.

And funny that you're now saying they sound like Between the Buried and Me, whereas in your review you saw fit to make a rather odd statement about them wearing their influences on their sleeve...which you seem to think so obviously include Dissection and Megadeth (I'm still confused what exactly is so Megadeth-ish about them...or if you even meant that to begin with. Dissection ok...but probably via Windir). Then continue to make dubious statements about Windir being from "that era" (wut?) of black metal where "faster, harder, triggered" bm had no place (meanwhile...there are Marduk, Dark Funeral, Setherial and other Swedish and Finnish band all up in the late 90s with Windir making exactly that. No Windir didn't make that kind of bm, but the entire premise of your argument there fails) in the scene. Mkay...

And yet this is the album where Vreid diverged the most from the Windir past...and if you'd actually bothered to listen to something other than V you might have actually realised that. I don't see how "their influences" shine through so damned hard on this album. And I don't get how you decide that they aren't a bm band through one album that diverged a fair bit from every other album they've made.

Lol @ Abigail Williams.

Lol@ Between the Buried and Me comparison...talk about a complete contradiction from what you claimed in your review.

Edited for not throwing around insults, probably not helping the situation.

Btw, the Between the Buried and Me thing was not an insult as their Colors album rocks.

Otherwise, it sounds like you know a lot more about black metal than me. That's cool and I'm totally willing to admit it. That being said, I do not think for an instant that means I don't know my stuff. I (and many of the other reviewers that get reprimanded often) like a lot of the extremely raw and heavy black metal/death metal/doom whatever bands as everyone else on this board does. I simply like one band more.

Vreid is a good band and by no means bad. However not every band that I listen to is going to wow me enough to check out their other works. It doesn't mean that I will never listen to PBB or Windir's stuff, it simply means that right now the music didn't have that lasting of an effect on me and right now my cd player is fine without another Vreid record. All of this talk about how great they are however is probably a sign that I should check it out anyway.

This is really well done black metal record. A lot of thought and passion was put into it. I liked more than 4 songs btw, sorry for not mentioning every single song and every single nuanced song on the album. I dug the entire album, but those 4 songs made an impression on me and made me pick up the back of the case, say "Whats the name of this song again?", and press repeat. The other ones are fine.

That being said, while they do a good job and are really mixing the feelings of Opeth like somberness with the riffage of Metallica and the coldness of Immortal it personally gets old for me after a few listens. I appreciate it more than I actually like it. More often than not it makes me just want to listen to the influences they borrow.

And as for Abigail Williams... well I wish that they would have changed their name. With members of God Dethroned and Aborted, comparing their newer album would be like comparing Cattle Decapitation's new albums vs. the older grindcore Locust stuff. Growing up in Phx and watching them turn into an annoying behemoth of poser metal Hot Topic kids, I have more experience than just about anybody when it comes to hating these guys. Then they got new members of respectable bands and released a great album, surprised the fuck out of me. Don't hate on a guy simply because he changes his mind about one band.
As for Watain, they recorded a great album too.

What I should have said in the review was, "People who were surprised by the new Watain and Abigail Williams records would dig". Easy enough.

So all in all, if you like the new Vreid album then awesome. I did too. Don't get pissy because I don't like it enough.

You should check out Windir.

This, just about to say the same.

I should also catch up on Vreid, about three albums behind and haven't listened to them in a good long while.

@AbouttoCrash, first of all, yeah my post was a bit douche-y last night. I'd had a few and was generally in an annoyed mood, so when I read that post out came the guns a-blazin'. Sorry about that.

But I do think you've actually misunderstood why I was so "pissy" in the last post and what my posts in this thread have meant as far as what I think of the album.

My reaction to your post to Kathaarian had nothing to do with being all "boohoo, you didn't like the album!" Actually, if you read my first post in the thread and even a thread I made myself about the album when it first came out, you'll see I was actually hugely disappointed by this album. I don't consider it to be one of Vreid's best by any means, or even close to being a favourite album of mine. Their other four albums overshadow this.

And that's where my general bone of contention with some of the stuff you'd said about the band comes into play. I keep getting the impression that when you talk about the band's sound, you're basing it solely on V (talking about forum posts, not review obviously). So poking fun at how "tr00" that band is (and probably the fact that I hate that word with a passion, and get kneejerk every time I read it/hear it), which I suppose was meant to question whether they're traditionally bm, and basing that assumption on one album just seems like overstepping what you've admitted you actually know.

And that was the impression I got of that "influences" part of your review, which is why I went on that little rant about how that part of your review didn't add up. I just think you went beyond what you knew for no purpose.

I can see how a completely objective review of the album without prior exposure to a band can be an interesting perspective to read, but if that's the case then I'd just stick with the music like you did in the main body of your review instead of what seems like adding something you might have heard about Windir or something.

You know what, I think that you are right.

It is interesting to read a review from someone who is not as experienced with the band which is why when it was offered to me I took it. But then you are right, no matter how much I know about other people's opinions of the band it isn't even worth mentioning if I haven't listened to them before and thus negating myself from an opinion on any work by the band other than what I myself have listened to. I'll keep that in mind for the future, so thanks for that.

Other than that it seems like I need to listen to some Windir. Will do.

Sidestepping the tl;dr flamewar, I get the feeling Vreid tried (pun unintended) to pull off a modern Enslaved sort of album but failed.

Karma you possibly have the best sig ever

You deprive yourself of quality music if you haven't listened to Windir. Three reviews of them on this site by me, and proud of all of them. Vreid ... I was a proponent, but they have steadily been losing me. Somebody here said that they tried to be Enslaved and did not do a good job of it. Sadly, I would have to agree.

I've heard a few songs off of youtube over the past few days and I've been digging it. i might have to check out some of their albums.