I’ve always been a fan of split CDs, compilations, and such. They are a nice way to introduce yourself to bands you’ve never heard before and in the case of Algol and Shroud of Despondency they fit that category perfectly.
So up to bat first are Algol and American black metal band with a nice melodic, atmospheric, and a slight electronic touch to their music. Although I won't pigeonhole them too much as they like to call their music ‘Dark Vinlandic Art.’ Algol was formed in Pennsylvania, USA by the then only sixteen-year-old Dalkiel and nineteen year old Sarnath back in 1998. After a few demos, the band recorded their debut in 2000. Since then the bands had some line-up issues, but luckily they’ve now established a strong line up for live shows and their new album is in the process of being recorded.
The songs that really stand out the most are ‘Numbing dreams with sad purple edges’ and the excellent cover of the Nirvana classic ‘Milk it.’ ‘Numbing…’ makes good usage of atmospheric keys in this song plus some nice melodic riffing and Dalkiel’s painful sounding vocals are quite great. Towards the middle of the song things slow up a bit and suddenly the music consists of just the keyboards and some electro beats while Dalkiel mournfully screams out the lyrics. Subsequently the cover of Nirvana’s song ‘Milk it’ is really good. I’m an old school Nirvana fan so this cover is cool to hear and I was a fan of Nirvana before Kurt blew his brains out, unlike most people out there. Anyhow, Algol keeps the song rather true to the original and they do a nice job of capturing the same amount of emotion displayed on the original. The only real difference is the vocals during the chorus are black metal screams and there’s some usage of keyboards. Otherwise the songs are very true to the original and show the same amount of anger and angst that Kurt Cobain put into the original. Overall the band's five songs are all played nicely and it should be interesting to hear their next album.
Shroud of Despondency is a Michigan based depressive black metal band with a little bit of a doom & death metal sound combined herein. The band itself consists of just one member by the name of Rory Heikkila, but he has used various session members for his previous recordings. Now I tell ya the thing I like about bands such as Shroud is that they can go from playing slow and doomy to fast and brutal in a flash of a second, and they do this a lot since the four songs here are all long tracks each of which clock in at over nine minutes or more. Another nice characteristic is Rory’s vocals since they are diverse and full of flavor. They range from black metal screams to slow death metal growls on these four songs. In addition during the slower moments the band achieve a really spooky atmosphere that works well. I guess there really isn’t any particular track from this band that stands out more than the other, because frankly they’re all good.
All things considered the listener is treated to over an hour of quality music from these two American bands. Prior to hearing this split I hadn’t heard anything from either of them, but I think I’ll be keeping my eye on them from now on. Do yourself a favor and go pick up this CD from Paragon records.
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