• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5

I was excited to see Heavy Metal Wraiths, the second album from Morgul Blade, show up in my review queue as I quite liked their earlier releases. They've leaned into the blackened vocals this time around, with less clean singing, to go along with their epic metal songwriting but, from the start, I find Heavy Metal Wraiths lacking in power. Morgul Blade seems to be going for a more atmospheric approach, but the production is muted with the vocals somewhat monotone as they ride over slow, occasionally plodding riffs. There are some good parts, like the pounding drums and twin guitars on the title track or the riff on "Spider God," but much of Heavy Metal Wraiths is just uninteresting. Then you have "Widow's Lament," one of the tracks with clean singing. With a synthesized hurdy-gurdy providing the music and lilting melodies and echoey, chanted vocals, it sounds like U2. It is a lovely song, but it almost feels like midway through Heavy Metal Wraiths a different album starts playing, so the tracking of the songs becomes another knock on the album. I don't dislike this album, it just can't seem to get out of its own way and when things that don't sound good are what you remember about a record, that's not a good thing. Heavy Metal Wraiths isn't as good as I was hoping it would be and that's a letdown.