Uvall - October Turns... Ruined (2006)

Uvall was the solo project of Lord of Storms (AKA Todd Paulsen) from the frozen north of Minnesota, USA. Between '03 & '06 he released two great black metal records, which I'm assuming went mostly unnoticed. The first album, 'Obsidian Torment' was mid-paced, eerie, repetitive, minimal black metal with occasional bursts of speed with a fairly raw production to boot. This follow-up, 'October Turns... Ruined' and ultimately his last creation before moving onto the band Dormant was similar but considerably more creative in the long run.

Much like the last album, Lord of Storms is still the sole mastermind behind the project and plays almost all the instruments (guitars, bass, vocals, synths, samples) except the acoustic guitars on track 5 are performed by M.U. Rotella, and the drums on this album are performed by Chris Donolan.

The music on the other hand seems to keep up with Uvall’s trademark old school black metal sound but with a few songs sounding rather influenced by the likes of Xasthur, Leviathan and Sapthuran. The difference however is where these three bands have a deep suffocating production that I can’t stand, this album, while still raw in style is much more properly produced and adequately audible when compared.

Uvall takes a lot of that dark doomy slow black metal sound from Xasthur and Leviathan and adds the acoustics of Sapthuran to the mix. Once again Lord of Storms manages to come up with some outstanding riffs that are just boding with evil and send shivers through your body as you listen. There’s even some guitar solos on a few of these songs, which is something I don’t remember being a big part of on the last album. Not to forget the vocal performance, which is definitely as strong and sinister as ever. There's also some moments during this record where its purely ambient and full of atmosphere as well as some minor progressive and post influences make an appearance. Furthermore the acoustic guitars are just brilliant, especially the already mentioned, ‘A Corpse in Ravens Lake,’ which is simply beautiful sounding.

There is not clear cut favorite off the album since the whole thing flows so well, but I do believe the title track, ‘Melancholy,’ and ‘Beckoning Death’ are the moments where Uvall shows the most promise that Uvall was going to be a force to be reckoned with in the future. However as I already mentioned earlier Todd went onto releasing music under the Dormant moniker, which is a bit different, but much like this under appreciated release is quite excellent.