VALDUR ”Raven God Amongst Us”
BloodyMountain Records – 2010 – USA
This is the second full lenght album of the American death/black metal band Valdur. Impact of the innovators of the genre (like Behemoth, Belphegor) is easily seen. Especially, I felt like Behemoth while solos were playing. We are seeing bands like this in the last couple of years. They don’t just use patterns of one genre, they mix some genres together. This isn’t just for black/death, you can see it everywhere.
There are black metal interacted death metal riffs in the “Raven God Amongst Us” album. I felt in same songs they used Eastern scales, might be Persian or Egyptian. Drums are very aggressive, I think sometimes it is too aggressive. Vocals aren’t sufficent for the songs. They could use stronger vocals to this fast and high tempo music. Sound is very good, just death/black…
I especially liked “Vicious Existence”, both intro and the solo that has place last parts of the song. This song seemed different than the others to me. But as I told before, album could be better with a stronger vocal.
Tough, aggressive, blackened death metal lovers could buy it with the eyes closed. You won’t regret after listening to that.
7/10