Italians and their horror go hand in hand, from the classic zombie and giallo films to a broad range of metal engaged with the genre. From your Paul Chain doom to the theatrics of Death SS, to the occult haze of a Mortuary Drape, they've got you pretty much covered if you're into the classic traditions and macabre mysticism. Not all of it is great, in fact a lot of it can get pretty goofy, but when I see an album cover this fucking awesome I am quite hopeful on the former. I mean this is artwork you really need to live up to...it reminds me of the first two Necromantia records...you've got a grisly looking Dracula that you don't want to fuck with, and a trio of ghastly brides that you wouldn't want to fuck with even with someone else's appendages. Lord Vampyr himself, Alessandro, has a long history in horror-themed bands like Theatres des Vampires and Malamorte, and while I found some of them a little cheesy, others certainly held promise.
I haven't heard a lot of his solo albums, granted, but I know he flirted around with some industrial or Goth stuff, which The Vampire's Legacy only dabbles in occasionally. For the most part, this is full-on vampiric black metal which does sound like an aesthetic mesh of the Greek style of groups like Necromantia and Varathron with perhaps a bit of Cradle of Filth's haunted house stylings. The tremolo picked riffs are dowsed in an attempt at creepy atmosphere through the note placement, and they mix things up a lot with some slower grooves that might be channeling a bit more of the Goth metal influence, but this record did surprise me with some great pauses/breaks that erupt into these excellent, smothering black metal riffs, with intense drum batteries, non-intrusive synthesizers, decent bass lines, and ecstatic leads that rip out of the creepy castle countryside that this album explores to the bone. Top this all off with Lord Vampyr's charismatic, gnarly vocals, a blend of your typical Dani Filth rasps and more haughty shouting, and there's a wide enough variety here to fill the space and time.
For instance, "Mircalla" starts off with this drugged out, Celtic Frost vibe to it before erupting into the lurching, stuttering blast kicks, where "Wicked" fully embraces the Gothic/heavy metal thing without somehow interrupting the harsher, faster elements of the album, and "Blood Ballad" is a violent dip into its namesake without losing some degree of heaviness. It all feels like it should exist in the same place, that Lord Vampyr is simply pacing things out so the listener can catch a breath before going back into the symphonic black metal depths, a few of which are well orchestrated with clean vocal choirs ("Mater Vampirorum", "In My Tenebra"). Nothing here is truly amazing, granted, and sometimes it does come off a little over overly committed, but I was impressed that this stuff at least made an honest attempt to earn that killer cover art, and there's no question that it's legit horror metal through and through.
Verdict: Win [7.5/10]
Tuesday, October 10, 2023
Lord Vampyr - The Vampire's Legacy (2021)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment