Early on in their career, Cruachan pioneered a sound that combined Celtic Folk music with Black Metal. The Middle Kingdom sees them leaving behind the Black Metal side completely. There’s often more “Folk” than “Metal” here. That is not necessarily a bad thing. I suppose it depends on individual tastes. These tracks have more in common with Skyclad than they do with the brilliant Primordial. The music is fairly well-produced, but Karen Gilligan’s vocals get overbearing at times. The title track is definitive evidence that a male vocalist would be better suited to this type of music. An album’s worth of Keith Fay’s scathing vocals, such as those found on the title track, would have made The Middle Kingdom a masterpiece! Cruachan does have the potential to be a great band. They are not lacking in the song-writing department. These songs are varied and well-structured. If they could just get past the weakness in the vocals they would be a much stronger band.

This band’s progression from a typical Black Metal sound to a more Pagan/Celtic sound is getting more and more pronounced every release. The Middle Kingdom sounds a Hell of a lot more Celtic than Metal and in the case of Cruachan, this isn’t really a bad thing. Their first album hinted that this would be the direction that they would take and they didn’t disappoint. One of the things that marred their debut was the fact that they seemed restrained by traditional Metal instruments. They literally sounded like they wanted to ditch their guitars and Skyclad-ish vocals but they just didn’t know how. This is a much more solid Celtic Metal fusion though some of it sounds a bit too “upbeat” for my taste. The addition of a female lead vocalist threw me for a bit, but after I recovered from the surprise and got used to the idea that this band wasn’t going to “gloom and doom” me to death, I enjoyed this album quite a bit.

Ultra high energy Thrashy Death Metal, with some sort of weird “Rock” overtones. I’m not sure that I’d say that this is really any more accessible than their previous albums, but it is something of an evolution. Or should I say “evil-ution”?

Four songs really isn’t enough of this great Euro Death Metal. It’s at time same time melodic and frenzied with Black Metal intensity.

I really wish my promo pack had included lyrics, so I’d know for sure if all the songs are supposed to be about Clive Barker’s novel Cabal (or the movie version of it, Nightbreed), or if that’s just the title track and artwork. Hey, I’d like to know! Anyway, this new album - wait! Holy fuck is that Pinhead talking?!?! Okay, these guys wear more gay makeup than a whole stable of whores, but it’s pretty hard to deny that this album is good. Perhaps a bit less “extreme” than their earlier work, and noticeably less keyboard saturated (both of which are okay with me), but all that means is that they’ve concentrated on making the songs more memorable. And there is still plenty of extremity to be found. Just listen to the first minute-and-a-half of “Lord Abortion.” In the press release, lead singer Dani describes this track as “total Death Metal,” and naturally I figured that he was full of pig shit. Well, there are little breaks of more atmospheric stuff and higher pitched vocals, but the majority of this track is brutal. Dani even occasionally uses low, guttural vocals. It’s kinda fucked up, but god damn it’s awesome. And the rest of the album follows suit. There are moments in every song where I wish that they’d not done something musically silly, or that the vocals went into outer space for a second, but the reality of the situation is that Midian is an album wherein quite a few Metal styles are fairly expertly blended together to make a damn enjoyable listen. Now, if I only had the lyrics…

This is not the band from Germany (that also goes by the name Corvus Corax, but plays Folk/Ambient and I believe already has released two albums – check the Gothic/Industrial/Dark Ambient section of your local music store) but the supreme Northwest horde. The music on this CD is so mature that it’s hard to believe that this is their first album! I have this band’s demo and though there were only two songs on it (“Son of the Earth” and “Mystagogue,” both of which are on this album as well), it clearly showed a band that would dominate the scene through superior songwriting. They haven’t let me down, even though I would have bet good money that my expectations wouldn’t be met. They have not only met my expectations but exceeded them. This CD is going to spend a lot of time in my player. The four songs on The Atavistic Triad are all well thought out, and though three of them clock in at over 10 minutes, they never feel overly long or get boring. I didn’t even mind the five minutes of dead silence before the outro kicked in - something that usually annoys the shit out of me! Black Metallers, get this one. Now. Kill if you have to. It’s worth every cent you spend, every drop of blood you shed and every year in prison that you get.

Lame, copycat, cheesy, wanna-be Nordic Black Metal filler. You heard one, you heard ‘em all.

I don’t know if Blackened Moon is the actual label this band is on or if it’s the name they use when they self-release stuff because the version of this that I got is on CD-R and was an advance copy not available in stores at that time. I can say for certain that this is one harsh album. If you like brutal Death Metal with semi-coherent vocals then Corpsevomit delivers the goods. I hear that this is the band’s first album, but I could swear that I’ve seen other stuff by this band elsewhere [1996’s Bastards of Foreverfilth demo was reissued on CD by Wild Rags. -Editor]. Either way, the band swears that this is their only official CD. The playing on this album is tight and the production gives them clarity, yet retains the heaviness in their songs. This is one of the few bands out there that keeps me believing in the whole brutal Death Metal genre. They never degenerate into copying another band, keep things interesting and kick enough ass to make this one worth searching out.

The fear might be subliminal, but the boredom is very obvious. C187 seem to want to have a “modern” sound, but don’t really fully commit to it, which ends up just making things even worse. The vocals never have anything to do with the simple, repetitive, staccato riffs, but it might only compound the problems if they did. I’d have to suffer through seeing these guys live to see if they say stuff like, “Yo, yo, what up? Muthafuckin C. to the one eight seven in the hiz-ouse, mutha fuckaz!” between songs to really accurately determine how much I hate them.