Resurrection

I got acquainted with Godgory through the song 'Death in Black' on the Nuclear Blast compilation 'Death Is Just The Beginning V'. As I found their record 'Resurrection', the absolutely beautiful album cover struck me. Adding the low price, I found myself a must-have. But have I really?

The slow, melodic and colorful songs are all pearls to cherish. Think of Guidence Of Sin with a much greater aura: filling the room, widening it. Giving you air, bringing you peace. The lyrics may not deal with much positivity and the music is doomy here and there, I feel no negativity at all when listening this album. Wonderful guitar soundscapes and acoustic interludes with softly soothing synthesizers underneath, laid on a solid ground of heavy guitars and bass.

But - there's always a but - there's another type of songs on this album: shorter and faster, in a typical Gothenburg style. And when the tempo goes up, quality drops. Never to a unacceptable level, but they do break down the atmosphere set by the jewels mentioned before. 'Crimson Snow' and 'Collector of Tears' sound underground, not even getting close to what fellow-countrymen In Flames and Dark Tranquility bring us. 'My Dead Dreams' might be an exception. I have to admit the keyboards make them sound catchy and the guitar solo's are quite decent as well!

When coming to the last chapters of 'Resurrection' you'll find 'Princess Of The Dark', an Accept-cover. Godgory succeeded in making it sound more like the Sisters of Mercy, with an evident 80's new-wave touch. I think this one can be considered a bonus track, for it stands isolated in it's appearance, compared to the rest of the album.

Time to come to a conclusion: is this really a must-have? Honestly: no, but - hey, there's that but again - I think I wouldn't regret purchasing 'Resurrection' when it had cost me some more.


Tonger_Bloedhiem for Metal-Archives 23-02-2010

For some reason Godgory is labeled directly to the Gothenburg scene, but I really don’t see that much of a comparison. They’re a doomier version of Dan Swanö more progressive death material, but the lyrics are more along the lines of classical things and pedophilia – a just combination. Production wise this is a very strong album: rhythm guitars pound riffs like no other in all chugginess, vocals are ripped with deep growls / border gutturals / border burping / whispers, bass doing minimum bass work, and drums actually not that spectacular but doing its job just right.

I want to focus more on the leadwork and the general tune of each song, because with the atmosphere they create we have the reason why this album excels beyond all those other Gothenburg bands. Now with this album Godgory stopped using clean vocals like on the previous two, but they still hold those sensual whispers (deep talking as well) [apparently these were done by a session musician] and only at the proper moments – usually at the slow more subtly melodic moments. Leadwork ranges from hypnotic, to classical, to doomy, to just flat-out chuggy. Those songs that rip through like a stampede such as “Crimson Snow,” “My Dead Dreams,” and “Collector Of Tears” have more in common with typical melodic death bands with their rigid structure and rough playing, but they’re not the highlights of the album. “My Dead Dreams” may hold one of my favorite solos by any band, but aside from its addictiveness the keyboards save that one from mediocrity.

In fact that’s another note to take on – keyboard use. It isn’t extensive, but the moments are when the guitars double on rhythm duty and let the keys handle those tranquil melodies and passages. “My Dead Dreams” out among its peers just because of this, but the slower tracks that utilize it more like the title track, “Death In Black,” and “Conspiracy Of Silence” are a step more dreamlike than the rest.

Another great addition are the use of acoustics, which are only really present on a couple songs but show up on the Accept cover as well. With it we have my favorite Godgory song, “Adultery,” a song worth every bit of your time with its serene, relaxing overtone and its more southern European inflection. The lyrics are as divine as a brothel in Amsterdam, but it’s melody is the “be all, end all” of romantic passages. Clean guitars give voice as well, but the acoustic prowess makes for a relaxing, but at the same time melancholic, song.

Another (deal with it) astounding thing to mention is how much the solos kick ass. Mikael Dahlqvist plays them solely and he’s a damn beast! His solos are very heavy metal oriented: flashy, catchy, captivating, and soaring. They give new life to the tracks they’re on and really add to the moment rather than detract from it.

So yes, get a copy of this album – yes, yes I already have my own copy and it also serves as a superbly in the car! You really won’t be disappointed by this release, and if you were then give it more listens until it just rules. Lastly, that Accept cover is extremely addictive!

Swedish duo Godgory caught my attention for no reason other than the fact that the local record store had, like, nine copies of RESURRECTION for no good reason and I was getting sick of looking at them. Upon bringing this home and expecting some basement-produced, bottom-of-the-barrel death metal, I was pleasantly surprised. Godgory are a mellow band!

The title track is the first song on the album and immediately grabs your attention with it's complacency and relaxing qualities, generic sustained power chords playing behind the synthetically produced orchestral sounds. And yet it rocks. I can't even explain why I think this song, and the rest of the similar-sounding album, is so good. But I do. Something about whispered vocals and bass crooning intermixed with legible death growls really gets me going as a metalhead who leans to the tamer side of things.

There are two basic types of songs on RESURRECTION: the mellow epic and heavy neck-snapper. They alternate back and forth, with odd-numbered songs being the former and evens the latter. So yeah, there's a formula, but the formula works.

This album isn't revolutionary. This band isn't incredible. But if your local record emporium has nine copies of this, by God, do yourself a favor and give it a chance. I did, and I give it fairly regular spins.

P.S.: The cover of Accept's "Princess of the Dawn" is almost as good as the original, with twice the swagger!

Resurrection – Godgory

Good stuff. All of the tracks, without exception, are very formulaic, so don’t expect anything too avant-garde here. But if solid Melodic Death Metal is what you’re in the mood for, well here you go.

Keyboards can very easily become annoying in DM, but not here. They are used for good atmospheric effect and are not overpowering. The rhythm guitar is a solid and steady reminder that this is supposed to be Death Metal, because otherwise one might forget. I guess you could call this Easy Listening Death Metal, if there is such a thing.

Slower tracks sprinkled throughout interfere with the pace a bit, especially at tracks 3 and 5. They had just gotten the tempo up to around what you think must be cruising altitude, then bam, they slowed it down.
It turns out though, that this is just how the album is. The faster tracks are the aberration, not the slow tracks. Very moody DM. Would be Doom if they were a little more depressed.

The album finishes up wit a passably good instrumental bit that would have been better off somewhere in the middle of the album. Overall, I’d have to say that’s the main drawback with ‘Resurrection’ – the order of the songs doesn’t allow the album to find it’s tempo.

Still, there are 10 out of 10 good tracks here, so I give it a high score.

Every now and then, I sit in a waiting room somewhere, at the dentists' office, for example, and either try to engross myself in a book, or fall asleep to the sound of the music playing on their radio. This music is guaranteed to be whatever happens to be playing on one of the local soft rock stations. There will be Phil Collins, Seline Dione, Michael Bolton, and other such atrocities…and all this music will be so formulaic that you know exactly what is coming next, when the harmonized vocal chorus is going to appear, when the string section (probably synthetic) will flourish and where exactly there will be a very sweet sounding acoustic guitar solo played, most likely, by some luminary from an old art rock band who needs the money to get his aging Farari repaired. And hence, we come to Godgory, who, at least on this album, seems to be some kind of mutation between Swedish death metal (the melodic kind) and adult contemporary music. NO, I'm not kidding. all right, so the "easy rock" influence may be only extrapolation on my part, but it's really the first thing that comes to mind when I hear this music.

The formula here is similar to another album in this little subgenre, namely, Hypocrisy's "The Final Chapter", in that the pattern of "fast song, slow song, fast song, slow song" is followed through the entire album's duration. Hypocrisy, though a crap band since 1993 or so, can somewhat get away with this because they at least have a level of consistency and both their thrash-influenced and more sedate numbers are reasonably integrated into their sound so that nothing sounds terribly out of place, and you could even say the formula works in their favour. not so in Godgory's case, though, for it sounds like two different bands are present on the album. We start off with a slow song, the title track, setting us up for the band's real sound, for the fast songs really are nothing special at all and have no identity whatsoever. "Resurrection" is probably the best track on here. It definitely has those pop tendencies, yet the melodies are pretty captivating and I always seem to enjoy it despite its predictability. Once you've heard this song, you can pretty well guess the rest of the Godgory formula: intro riff, either quiet or distorted, undistorted verse, chorus, verse, guitar solo, chorus. Yes, the sound is excellent, and so is the guitar work (there are loads of beautiful solos to please the ears), and the band's ability to craft a potent melody is fairly impressive. However, more is needed to make these more than just ear candy, and this is where Godgory falls flat.

The second song, "Crimson Snow", is a token fast number, and unfortunately it's easy to hear from this and the others on the album (most of which are at a fast rocking tempo rather than this blasting track) that the band has only written about two riffs for each of these songs, which they proceed to mercilessly run into the ground in the most tedious and redundant way. These aren't even good riffs, either, but throwaway Gothenberg fair that even a band like Gardenian would probably find too dull and pointless to utilize for more than a few seconds. It's in these fast songs, too, that the limitations of the drum machine (or its programming, I should say) really become apparent. It's just constant "beat beat beat", without any sort of variation or fills to make the proceedings interesting. To add insult to injury, one of these tunes is an Accept cover, "Princess of the Dawn". The original is bloody great, but this is an abomination, for although it's played quite faithfully (except for some tasteless keyboards in place of the acoustic guitar at the end of the song), the vocalist "chooses" to sing every line in the fucking worst, most ridiculous sounding "uber goth" mumbling drivel that is supposed to make young females swoon and squirm but makes the rest of us want to smash in the effete scum's head with a brick. I hope Accept sues these bastards, at the very least. Unfortunately, these vocals pop up in several of the slower tracks as well, as I suppose they would be more palletable to the people at the dentist's office than the growl that pervades on most of the album. The death vocals are actually pretty good, strong and powerful….makes me wonder why, if this isn't really a full band anyway, they couldn't just get someone in who could sing, at least for the damned Accept cover.

In closing, the only thing worthwhile about this album is the guitar playing, which is very skilled, though not very metal for the most part. If you like nice acoustic guitar solos, and lilting leads, you may get a few enjoyable listens out of this. The appeal will probably wear thin very fast, though. You could use this to impress your mom, I suppose, if she has particularly shallow tastes.