Kall : "Brand"

I used to love Lifelover, so when I heard they were kind of back together in this band , it made me happy., This album is more of a blatant black metal direction compared to the first one. There is more of a gallop than blast beats, which is fine with me. There is a more of a modern Darkthrone feel to this than anything that depressive. Things get darker on the second song. More emotive. Perhaps not outright depressing, but tormented for sure. Sax is the odd unsung instrument. It is interesting how much of a prescence it has in black metal over the past few years. There is more of a rock n roll feel to the wonderfully written groove of "Eld" . It is both melodic and dynamic. Not the most black metal moment of the album in fact it is more indie rock like Hum than anything. That is except for the angry scowl of the vocals.

"Fukta din  Aska"  or "Moisten your ashes" has a great deal of metallic kick going into it then allows it's self to drift off into a dark place. I would be all about it except for the fact the song is over 17 minutes which is excessive. What goes down is sprawling and beautiful. Not something you can listen to on the way to the store. Is there fat that could be trimmed from this song? Yes. The sax solo is cool , but some of this could have been edited down and then they could jam out as they see fit on stage. They go full on blast beat by the end, though it does not end up sounding like everything else. For all my criticism of blast beats they can be effective when used sparingly. There is a whole jammy section that while it has impressive guitar playing and is pulled together nicely, is more than I am going to listen to on a regular basis. The song after this one is almost 13 minutes and leads in with another jammy section. Once again great guitar playing that makes it more forgivable. Almost five minutes in before the vocals commit to anything more than a sparse scream. The musical scope of what they are kicking up sonically impresses me. It explodes with more of a rock n roll drive.

The drop things back into a darker creeping groove for the last song "Fall" . It's eight and a half minutes long ,which at this point in the album doesn't seem like very long. At the two minute mark it kicks in with the distortion. The sax comes in over a big sludgey riff that they jam out on . I will round this down to a 9.5 ,because it is not a perfect album due to some of the jammy bloat. It might not be perfect, but is it still pretty fucking awesome with the massive sounds they bring to the table here and the places this album takes you are pretty epic as well. Out on Prophecy.