Reviews

Graceless – Where Vultures Know Your Name

Raw Skull Records – 2020 – The Netherlands 

I am pretty sure that some you know or will remember the band called Soulburn from Holland. It is one of the doomy black-death metal bands of the Netherlands and Soulburn was founded by Bob Bagchus who was one of the founder of Asphyx. Here are we have two Soulburn members,one is Remco who formed Graceless. I stated this info as you start to understand the sound of the band and the musical dynamics it carries if you want to know what you deal with. I can easily say that Graceless,as band and sound, it is a archetypical representative of the mid-tempo Central European Death Metal genre that was rooted from the second half of the 1980s.

It can be clearly seen that this 45 minute  full-lenght album called Where Vulture Know Your Name has all the basic features of the classical Dutch death metal music scene. Songwriting of compositions clearly structures the consist of the cold-blooded middle tempo doomy death metal riffs and tunes of central Europe way of Death metal, and these songs carry pieces from the self-directed aggression and lead melodies of the nihilistic European doomy black metal , metal as itself. You shouldn’t think this is a new trend of Autopsy, Entombed and Asphyx rip offs that is frequently seen in the underground metal music scene lately, here we have a serious high Germanic doom cult. Songwriters of Graceless actually performed a style that was difficult to play in an original way. Mid- tempo doomy death metal has to have creative compositions and solos, playing technical and fast in this respect is not a rule of the game, but you have to be creative and have to make the right compositions with strong lead and rhytm
guitars in places, and to give the dedication of the obligative doom spirit to the songs. This album offers you this in a very healthy way. Accordingly, vocals, concept and lead
composition structures are perfectly matched with the terms I stated above but can be boring and repetetive in some places for some listeners. This is the credit what Graceless is taken from my musical perspective.

I can describe the band’s recording and sound quality as average, you can not find that ‘every perfect touch’ and it is not an album which is produced perfectly in every aspect of sound and production. The master sound can be said to be successful for some sonic sickos, but I can’t say that I like the mixes, but in the end of the day, I can say they have achieved their goals, probably their main goal could have created an album with cool dynamics and leads that can
be listened by doom death maniacs. I can clearly say that Graceless can stand out better if they focus on lead guitar riffs, which they do very well, with a stronger analog master sound and contemplated mixes. Anyway, this band is a must to listen for doom-death maniacs right
now.

Author’s Album Note 
7/10

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