Mortal Blood : " Fate's Overture"

 

This one man project is brought to you by Dan Krell. who would have been better served bringing in a drummer as the pitter patter of the programmed drums hold the first song back from hitting as hard as it could. To his credit the dense guitars works well, though the single note melodies are not as strong from a production stand point. The vocals work well enough for me though. Here is the problem with recording you album in your home studio, I am going to weigh your album against every other album I review here, so if you can do it yourself more power to you, but I am not offering any special consideration for you if you are not able to do this. Because it is time I am investing in listening to your album that could have been better spent with something that is fully realized finished work. 

If the song writing is able to compensate for everything not being fully dialed in there is a little room to work with, things here just seem to drone on one theme. "Fury and Sorrow" lingers a little more, but all the sonic elements introduced in the first song remain. The instrumentation gets mushed in the mix, and everything melts together, There are some good ideas being drowned in poor separation. Perhaps less would have been more. Krell is a decent guitarist who might benefit from being in a band with three other minds to balance things out. The darker sounds that might get called goth lurk as shades of things not committed to. "A Monster Approaches" is allowed to linger and breathe a little more . It emerges as a more effective display of his ideas. The sung vocals work but could have been given better space in the song. More traditional metal riffs also claw their way out. Some of the guitar soloing gets a little pitchy as well. 

" A Hell Dream" finds the vocals calling out with the same anguish. The drums patter with a perhaps less believable sound. Sung vocals return, as well but are more buried in the mix. While it does not drone in quite the same way, there is little clarity in terms of where the song is going. "Empower the Warrior' could stand to be more empowered by better production, the vocals are garbled, the more driving guitar pushed to the background. A better mix would have organized these ideas into something more cohesive, it is hard to listen to this album in it's current state. I think this could have been something worthwhile, and perhaps in the future this project will deliver that, in it's current state I have to give this a 5.5 as it's hard on the ears.