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Frost > Cursed Again > Reviews
Frost - Cursed Again

Absolute genius - 90%

Wizardjoe, September 9th, 2007

If you have even the slightest distaste for Black Metal, read no further. Brummies (in particular, Britain’s own multi-instrumentalist/ producer Mick “Irrumator” Kenney) Frost’s second offering is as dark, as dismal and as uncompromising as anything you will hear coming from Norway. Let’s not go getting lost in comparisons with Gorgoroth and Mayhem, as this is a rather special offering.

So what can be expected this time? First impressions: not brilliantly recorded/ produced, but does this affect the experience? No. Bleak, lyric-less inlay, but are we worried? No. Only eight medium-length songs, with no breaks, ballads or intermissions of any sort - don’t expect to come up for air once the disc has begun to spin. But, with “Cursed Again”, you won’t even want to.

Upon discovering what Irrumator is doing you’ll be hooked. It is extremely varied within its tight parameters, which is very difficult to achieve without losing track of what you are doing. To explain “varied” further, as many of you will be shuddering at the thoughts of symphonic/ melodic Black Metal. Fear not - fans of the mastermind will know by now that Irrumator picks a style, experiments with it AND keeps it above average, (just listen to Mistress’ “Whiskey Tastes Batter”).

We get the same overall effect with Cursed Again: the vocals, though primarily typical/ droning Black Metal vocals, very occasionally sweep into a King Diamond-esque wail; the guitars, provided by Irrumator (as well as the drums) effortlessly change rhythm/ timing in an instant, accompanied by the drums that, although not overly technical, keep a constant beat above many Black Metal acts of today.

The beauty of this CD is that any one of the eight medium-length songs could be entitled as “my favourite” track, be it the explosive riff-lord Doom Funeral, the stomping Down Here, the mesmerising The Rise, the chilling Cursed Again, or the thrashing Empty of Life.

In short: Like Black Metal? Buy this album.

Frost - Cursed Again - 70%

StianMorgan, September 4th, 2004

Not known to many, this oddly lined-up band practice in what most of you will know as ‘Necro/True Black Metal’. For those of you who aren’t familiar with that term, Frost plays an earlier style of black metal, reminding most of the hugely successful and legendary De Misteriis Dom Sathanas, by Norway’s Mayhem.

The album explosively starts off with one of my personal favourite tracks on the album – Doom Funeral, and this explosiveness carries on for another half hour, where you experience the haunting NecroChoir, featuring a member of the up-and-coming Reign of Erebus, Attila style vocals and great musicianship.

As you arrive at about track 5 or 6 you let out a sigh, realising that this album does get a bit repetitive but it picks up again as you approach the ending few tracks. The album involves some great lyrics, and some rather odd lyrics: “My heart is a filthy black turd” but great to read if you can make out the distorted writing in the album sleeve. As hard as I’m trying to think, there isn’t much that drags this album down, but there isn’t a lot that makes it superb. If I had a choice there are a lot of albums I would rather listen to, but there are even more I wouldn’t prefer to listen to. In the end I recommend this album to you if you’re in the money, but if you rarely get the chance to buy a CD, go for something you’d rather have, unless of course a DMDS continuation style album is your ideal thing.

Derivitive but great - 85%

Fungicide, May 3rd, 2003

Frost is Mick Kenney's (aka Irruminator, also of Anal Nathrakh, Mistress and Fuckpig) old school black metal band. Kenney does all the guitar and bass work, programs the drum machine and does backing vocals. He has drafted in a veritable Satanic Choir -two main vocalists and four other backing singers-to sort out the rest of the vocal duties, and this results in one of the most interesting features of the album, namely the experimentation with syncronised (and even at times harmonic) Black Metal Screams and Belches.
Apart from the vocals, this album is pretty derivative of (old) Mayhem and Dakthrone. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with that, but if you're looking for something a bit more off the beaten track, you'd best look elsewhere. The riffing is somewhat simplistic and in places repetative, but when it sounds like it could have come straight from the fret board of Euronymous, you can't complain. The 'drumming' is funcional and varied enough to stay interesting troughout, but is not going to draw you're attention away from the guitar and vocal work.
The real acid test for this style of metal is, can it send a shiver down your spine? Frost pass this test with flying colours; Cursed Again is as scary as De Mysteriis... would have been if Dead(R.I.P) had still been on vocals. The album has a dark, degraded atmosphere oozing from its every orrifice, and that means that despite the fact you've heard music similar to this before, this release is a thoroughly worthwhile purchase for any fan of the genre.