Liste des groupes Black Mélodique Catamenia Cavalcade

For those of you who have been living under a rock for the past ten years or so, Finland's Catamenia have been playing a style of folksy melodic "black" metal akin to country mates Kalmah. They've released nine albums, within a fifteen year span of time, all through Massacre records. So they must have been doing something right. It's been about 2 years since their last release, VIII : the Time Unchained. This newest album is entitled Cavalcade, which means a procession of knights on horesback. This time around, the band has progressed on to experimenting with metalic influences of different genres, outside of Finland.

The first track, Blood Trails, features Ville Laihialla(of Poisonblack) on guest vocals. This song rocks at a medium speed with a soothing and pleasing tone. It reminds me of the style of In Flames. Cavalcade, Silence, and Reincarnation also rock at a medium pace with the Gothenburg style of melodic death metal. Those songs can also be compared to recent In Flames music. Quantity Of Sadness and a Callous Mind grind at a faster speed, with intervals of melodic guitar hooks. Those two songs sound more comparable to Dark Tranquillity.

The Path That Lies Behind Me combines the mild Gothenburg style with the alternative rock style of the Goo Goo Dolls. I can also detect a slight influence from The Offspring in this song. The grim vocal interludes are the biggest difference from this song not being real alternative rock music. the vocal approaches sound very nice on that song. Post Mortem is a lively, yet slightly corny song, which is broken up with insertions of guitar hooks that sound a lot like Running Wild, from their song Marooned (from Death Or Glory). The Vultures Feast is a slower and more sophisticated song, with some very complicated guitar structures. It has an old southern fried sound like Lynyrd Skynyrd, from the 1970's. It's got some beautiful choruses and still comes through with a hint of the Gothenburg style. Angry Again is a cover of a 1990's Megadeth song. Their rendition of it is so good, that I can only recognize the difference of the grim vocals, from sounding blatantly different than the Megadeth original.

This is a refreshing step forward for this band. The progress that they have made with their song writing, by adding the influences of Gothenburg death metal mixed with 1990's American alternative rock has worked really well on this album. My taste of metal music has changed recently. I enjoy metalcore bands like Blessthefall and As I Lay Dying, they also add a touch of alternative rock sound to their metal. But Catamenia are definitely not metalcore, because they lack the punk rock influence. Instead of that, they've got the Gothenburg influence. If they keep this up, then SOM will have to change their genre listing from melodic black metal into melodic death metal. Most of the fans seem to prefer Dark Tranquillity's new album, We Are The Void. But I prefer this album over that one, because I can relate to it better.

Catamenia for me is another one of those bands that in every album keeps your interest up until the end and every release has something new to offer. This one is no exception. When you listen to Halls of Frozen North and this right after, I bet you my head that you wouldn't recognize them as a same band.

But enough of that and let's get to the actual album. Even though it's very different from their other albums, it still has that Catamenia-feeling. Music is not that fast anymore, which in my opinion is a bad thing for them. Riffs are really good, one of the best I've heard in a while and you can actually hear the bass. Drumming is also solid and as I said before, a bit slower... in a bad way. Then we have the vocals, well, three of them: high screams that they are known for, deep, and I mean deep growls and also cleans that they have added in their latest releases more and more. Screams are great, The Best Of the three. Growls are very nice too, maybe a bit out of the place in sometimes. Cleans are also very good, but there are maybe a bit too much of them. Lyrics don't focus so much on the killing coldness of the north like they used to, but mainly in dark themes.

In the end, this is a very good release, but still falls off too much for me. Has it's moments, plenty of them, but mainly disappointed me coming out from their other albums.Recommended tracks: Blood Trails, Cavalcade, A Callous Mind, Angry Again (a very nice little treat here).