LADLO Productions (2012)

I can only imagine how much some black metal puritanists hate these new atmospheric/shoegazing/hipster/whatever extreme metal bands, who dare to call their music black metal. But as we all know, you can't play black metal without satanic ideology, no matter how harsh, evil or aggressive you sound.

The Great Old Ones takes its inspiration from Lovecraft's books, as countless other metal bands have done before. Actually it's not very creative that the lyricist Benjamin Guerry (guitars & vocals) takes the lyrics and the song titles almost straight copy-paste from Lovecraft's books, it feels just like the lyrics are written in a hurry or something.

The music itself is quite cool, monotonous, fast and massive metal, reminding me of great Altar of Plagues and Wolves in the Throne Room. Six songs and 52 minutes of high quality music, but somehow the music is a bit too monotonous, so some surprising changes and uplifting moments are the things that this album needs.

”Al Azif” is a good first album, but next time I'd like to see more intelligent lyrics and some musical diversity, but otherwise the band seems to be on the right tracks.

www.thegreatoldonesband.com
www.lesacteursdelombre.com/productions

Rating: 3.5 / 6

Composed by Joni Juutilainen