Saturday, June 19, 2010

GALAR – Til Alle Heimsens Endar CD review


GALAR – Til Alle Heimsens Endar CD
Dark Essence Records

It’s always cool to listen to a metal band from another country that incorporates their natural surroundings as an influence as well as the musical aspect. GALAR hail from Bergen, Norway and are primarily a Norse influenced act with black metal touches. Think of a light hearted version of BURZUM or ENSLAVED with a greater emphasis on the Norse/Viking themes and harsh plus clean sounding vocals. GALAR are a two piece act with army of session musicians. The main band consists of Slagmark aka: Marius Kristiansen who gives you the harsh black metal styled vox plus guitar and bass. Also there’s Fornjot aka: Are B Lauritzen who’s responsible for the clean vocals as well as the keyboards and the bassoon. Yes I did say bassoon and there’s a wealth of it on here as well as some classical piano and string interludes. GALAR are not some Christian devil icon worshipping corpse painted kiddies. This duo is two classically trained musicians who are breaking all the rules of black metal and adding new ones. Sure adding classical elements is nothing new but what GALAR are doing on this release is adding black metal to the classical. Think of BACH or WAGNOR wearing a pentagram while playing the piano with DARKTHRONE in the balcony blasting along. Sadly the production on here is lacking. The music should be overwhelming but it’s still in the low fi range which does this a disservice. Still I consider it a great release.

www.darkessencerecords.com

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