Munruthel
CREEDamage

This Munruthel figure is said to be a legend in the Ukranian metal field, that may well be true but in a sense I fail to see the relevance in naming such a thing in a press release. First of all, how easy is it to check the legend status on someone in Ukraine? I have no idea how easy or difficult it is but I don’t care to try either. Then what does a legendary status mean for this album? in the past he has done well which means this is automatically good? no it does not. There are some review quotes that are very positive as well and that is also something I think labels add just to try and influence other reviewers to write positive stuff, to scare them from going against the grain so to speak (appeal to the flock behaviour of man). But readers, fear not, I never venture from my opinions and I tell it as I see it no matter what other reviewers say, and this is my take on this album:

It is said to be pagan metal and that may be true, it is many folkish inputs with flutes, strings and allsorts. There are female vocals, clean male vocals and the leading vocals style is some dreadful growling that sounds bad, plain and simple. The music in itself is not often heavy, sometimes it is majestic but most of the time kind of intimate and quite beautiful. The production is brilliant and I can imagine the warriors in Rhapsody taking out their swords in order to either threaten this poor Munruthel fellow to give out his production secrets or kill him if he does not. The songs span quite a large spectrum of musical stylings and some would probably say a too large span as it tends to loose coherency at times and the album is quite long with a one hour playing time as well. Still, I think that we can conclude that it is a very good production with an impressive soundscape.

That could also mean that it is a good album, I am not so sure that it is however and I have taken a long time (and many play throughs) deciding. It starts in a really exciting manner with an intro and a great opening song, something that sets up a great promise for this album. That is a promise that is being kept at times (like in the Bathory cover called The Lake) but at times it falls into some slow lulling that just doesn’t take the album anywhere. But these stoppages in flow of the album are not as serious as the poor vocals which along with the incoherency of the album are the two biggest letdowns. The ending trio of tracks are clear examples of this, they have brilliant part but also dull, extended and repetitive nothingness that is actually just annoying to hear. It is a shame that an album that shows so much promise also does so much to not live up to this promise.

It may be something for those of you who like pagan metal or who can overlook dreadful growls and see all the positives while closing your eyes to the negatives. I think this album lacks a clear direction and that may actually be its downfall because there are so many really good parts, so much that I like about this album but I do not like the album itself because the whole of it is not good. The opening song is great and so is earlier mentioned Bathory cover and there is one or two more songs I can live with, the rest is not something I like. So in the end I will keep maybe three of the songs from this album in my music player while the rest will be thrown away. It is a decent album but it has too many downsides to really be one that I can listen to.

HHHHHHH