“The
Echoes of Tales Once Told" is a superb demo, and if you love black metal, you will understand what I mean when I say that it has "that feeling", inherent in all quality and heartfelt black metal.
Old Corpse Road succeed in this by creating very interesting, quite long and absorbing songs, with many moments of sheer beauty, rage and darkness, tinged with a tenderness for nature and heritage, one only experiences with black metal of this calibre. The vocals are varied and exciting (no less than four of the band contributing here), with vocals on the eponymous first song reminding me of Demonos Sova of
Barathrum, at times Piaty of Sunwheel to name a couple. Throughout this cd we have black metal screams and shrieks, guttural death vocals, and strong spoken word in a classic and very affective (and importantly, genuine!) English accent. The drumming through the cd is solid and passionate, correctly never encroaching too much in the mix. As the backbone of any metal song, the drums are consistent, strong and perfect for the songs that it supports.
Blast beats are played vigorously and in time, the fills drag you into the next part of the song with flair. The guitars have a crunch in the distortion giving way to layers of dark riffing, performed with skill, they are exactly what is required to pull off these songs. We also have several acoustic passages, gentle and distinctive, they really succeed in defining certain moments during the songs. Bass is again played with skill and serves not to merely shadow the guitars, but bring in a groove of its own to underpin the guitar passages and strengthen them boldly. The keyboard passages come and go, timed perfectly to complement the mood, ranging from choirs, reminiscent of "In the nightside eclipse", to church organ, reminiscent of early
Cradle Of Filth. The keyboards are played when necessary, not constantly, unlike a lot of formulaic black metal we have all heard many times before. In summary this is an excellent cd, the first song will have you chanting "the old corpse road" long after you have heard it, song two will raise the hairs on your neck with rousing black metal class, song three will make you long for more classic black metal with it's passion and paces, and each song will mean so much more when listened to with the lyrics at hand. I cannot recommend this enough to the black metal connoisseur. I expect even greater music to come from
Old Corpse Road, I can't wait for the full length album, until then, "The
Echoes of Tales Once Told" will remain in my car's cd player for the foreseeable future!
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