Our review of "Mount Arreat", the second album by German band OLD RUINS, is now live — and we gave it a 7/10. The record came out on September 18 via Sick Taste Records, three years after their debut "Always Heading East".
Video games usually turn up in metal as a joke, or, in the case of nintendocore, as a sound borrowed from game soundtracks. The Gelsenkirchen band go the other way. Both of their albums are built on Blizzard's "Diablo", and they treat the game with a straight face. According to the band, you don't need to know the story to follow the music: close your eyes, put the record on and dive into the tale of the dark wanderer.
Musically the album mixes melodic and atmospheric black metal, melodic death metal and classic heavy metal, and the sound is old-school rather than polished. The guitars are the strongest part of it. "Gates Of Harrogath" is our standout, riding a catchy melodic black metal riff before it drops into clean passages that could come off a classic heavy metal record. "Uileloscadh Mor" opens on rain and keys and turns into atmospheric black metal that SUMMONING fans will enjoy. "Nihlathak" is all blast beats and armies charging across a battlefield, and "Tyrael's Despair" closes the album strongly with clean vocals delivered as desperate shouts.
Our reservations are about cohesion. The drums sit too loud in the mix, the classic heavy metal solos don't always sit well with the black metal around them, and "Lord Of Destruction" doesn't stand out on its riffs. For now the album sounds more like a collection of good ideas than one cohesive record. There are a lot of good ideas, though.
We covered "Tyrael's Despair", the album's second single, back in August.
Order & Stream "Mount Arreat": Sick Taste Records
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