This album is a stone cold classic, mostly, kind of. When I was doing primary school teaching, the giving feedback to kids strategy was something like 'two deposits for every transaction', ie two bits of praise for every bit of negative feedback. Well, let's get the negative feedback out of the way first. Yeah, so the vocals. Well they aren't horrible, but considering how ridiculously great the rest of the album is it's a real strange thing. Devoid of power- you know how people sing when they aren't confident? Well, it's pretty much that.

Very little range, no real power, just kinda whining. Considering that the vocalist didn't even write the lyrics- which by the way, are these nicely over the top lyrics that take verbosity way beyond parody- you've got to wonder why he's even in the band. You get a few guys together, and chances are that one of them will be a better singer than this guy.

Real strange. It's made more perplexing when you compare the vocals to the rest of the album, which is just ridiculously good, in pretty much every way. It's not particularly far out or anything, but it doesn't really sound like much else- I'm thinking a more muscular While Heaven Wept circa their Vast Oceans. Album, or early Atlantean Codex. It borrows a lot from early death doom, decent bit of early, non shit Katatonia and even Anathema in here, and I reckon in some places there's even a touch of melodic black metal- bit of Sacramentum and that Decameron band or whatever.

That said, the core here is pure heavy/doom stuff- a lot of early Candlemass, Pagan Altar, NWOBHM-on-steroids sort of thing. It's a really great mix, and it's done super well. Anyway, it's real huge and ticks off all the boxes with aplomb. A thicker atmosphere than Jupiter, while still being monstrously heavy. Catchy, but rarely veering into outright melodic territory. Great, lyrical dual leads.

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A mood that could best be described as 'a medieval english knight getting rained on', rather gloomy, rather grim, occasionally very fierce. The songs are rarely in a hurry to finish, but when the songwriting is this tight, when the parts are this good, that's fine. It's pretty rare I think a 67 minute album isn't long enough.

But here I am, wishing there were a few more songs. I can perhaps nitpick a little bit- some of the acoustic parts drag. That's pretty much it. So, the vocals are bad but the rest is world class- as in, all-time classic sorta thing. How to rate it? Well, after 50 odd listens I'm still not sure! The best comparison I can come up with is perhaps Briton Rites' excellent but flawed For Mircalla, where massive riffs where dragged down by some generic, whiny doom vocals. Mario World 2 Download Romantic By Korede.

Here, it's perhaps not as bad- plenty of long sections with few vocals, the dude isn't super offensive and if nothing else it's fun wrapping yourself around the idiosyncratic lyrics. The question is- does the album succeed, despite it's weakness?

The answer is an overwhelming yes, for me. So highly recommended. This album is a hard one for me to review as I consider it one of the finest albums ever made. If I made a podcast/video review it would entirely consist of THIS RIFF, THAT VOCAL LINE, THAT HARMONY, and yes all of those words would be shouted with nearly tears forming in my eyes too. However for the domain of written reviews that is the metal archives that kind of gushing non subjectivity won't work will it? So please bare with me while I try to write a mediocre review about one of the best albums ever made.

So now I gave you my warning let's move on to the actual album. I would describe this album as the following: Imagine Candlemass mixed with Running Wild's Celtic melodies run through Pagan Altar's mindset. The closest resemblance out there would be the The White Goddess by The Atlantean Kodex except this album has no Hammerheart era Bathory feel to it in terms of the tones of the instruments. It is also decidedly less power metal influenced. Lastly this album sounds English to the core. The songwriting itself is absolutely stellar, everything seems to be arranged and written just right to cause one to always long for more while listening to the specific parts of the album yet at the end of each track and the album itself you do feel thoroughly fulfilled. The album itself sounds very big and powerful.