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Holy Blood > Странник > Reviews
Holy Blood - Странник

A Pretty Decent First Attempt - 70%

josephatx, July 2nd, 2008

The Wanderer is the debut album of Holy Blood, and when grading and reviewing it, I will treat it as a band's first attempt.

The production quality is pretty decent throughout the album's entirety. Guitars, drums, vocals, and the folk/atmospheric elements are each distinguishable. The bass kinda comes in and out of the mix however, but this is not a problem for me, perhaps it would be for bass players or bass enthusiasts.

Overall, the music is pretty entertaining throughout most of the album. Since it is a debut, the band is apparently still trying to find their sound which they perfect in later albums (see Holy Blood's - Waves Are Dancing). As a result, some of the songs are greatly varied from others. Some songs focus on black metal elements, some on folk/pagan/battle metal (whatever you prefer to call it), some on a more death metal sound, and some are a mix of all of the above (which is the sound of later albums).

The vocals generally acommodate whatever element they are focusing on said song. Most of the album features high shrieks, but the more death influenced songs also feature the low gutteral growls. The folk songs feature the occaisonal chants in unison that is a trademark or folk metal. Also added are a couple of acoustic filler tracks, which don't really take away much from the album as a whole, since there are folk elements throughout the album. Since the music is varied from song to song, there are a few gems in this album and a few "what the hell were they thinking" tracks.

Overall, I think this is a pretty decent album, but it is difficult to listen all the way through. When Holy Blood are on to something really good (like the tracks: The Wanderer; In the Lake of Fire; The Poor World), the music is enjoyable and entertaining, but when they are off, the music is painfully annoying (e.g. Kill; Cold Winds; Kill (Remix)). The gems make this album worth it, just skip the bullshit and get to the good tracks.