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Holy Grail: Ride the void

15/05/13 || Ironpants

Two girls, one grail.

Let me tell you a little story, I tend to review myself every time I do an album review, so why should this be any different. There’s two kind of coverage we tend to do here at GD. One is the plain “Review”, the other one is “Stubs”. This was meant to be a “Stub”, but I met unfriendly fire on the way and had to retreat and change it to a review. Because this shit was pretty good and I can’t compress it to a few lines. Some people might even say that I write too much about shit? No? OK.

Now the story, as I am around 150 years old, give or take, I started out as every other metal dude with Kiss, Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, the works. Along the way, it has transformed to more brutal and harder music, working my way through all the genres on the way, making stops in every “new” genre and conquering it, making it mine, before leaving it and travel forth before finally pulling the brakes and make the final stop in the death/black genre, and there I built my fortress and locked myself in for a couple of decades.

With age comes wisdom they say, and nowadays I can appreciate all kinds of shit, calmly looking back on my career as a mass consumer of music, but I always make sure that I have one gate open to hell and can retreat back to my darker domains if I run into trouble, like I would be some serpent or a rat. So in todays standards, I lean on my trve love for extreme metal, and then gather a few favorites in all genres, but here’s the catch… I fucken despise power metal and folk metal! Even if you put a gun to my head, I will refuse too listen to stuff like Hammerfall, Sabaton, Finntroll or what-the-fuck-ever they wanna call their bands. I’d rather sell my kids to trafficking or do a gender transition and start taking dance classes in jazz ballet than listen to that crap. If you put on the new Stratovarius on the stereo at your party, I will fucken leave, maybe thrash a table or so on the way out. Pull the same shit in my house, and you will be the next mugshot on the milk carton and then filed under missing people.

I’m not proud of this, and I can’t explain it, it’s just how it works. I’m old enough too know this about myself, so I stay away from that kind of music. Another strange aspect about this fact, is that I can listen to “softer” music or even another “non-metal” category and like it, but the power and folk blows out the door quicker than you can say “dildo”. There is a mental Grand Canyon that begins where heavy metal borders to power metal and it ends where thrash metal starts. And that canyon is filled with barbed wire, land mines and pools with crocodiles in it.

Then I stumbled over this baby. I heard a song somewhere, which I kinda liked, so I looked them up and it appears that they had released their debut in 2010 and I’ve seen them labeled “power metal” somewhere. That in itself is probably why I have just ignored them, and I totally not agree about that label. I would rather call it modern heavy metal or whatever. Anyhow the song I heard was “Bestial triumphans”, and I think I know one of the reasons that triggered my grey substance inside that old bucket called cranium, and that is the vocals. In that particular song singer James-Paul Luna serves up a tone of voice that is not that unlike Claudio Sanchez in “Coheed & Cambria” (which I happen to like). The vocals in total on this record is flawless, it’s not that higher pitched cheesy metal voice, it’s more medium-high and never really hit those annoying high notes. Further on through the album, he also provides some diversity with some harsher vocals, and “semi-growls”, only for accentuation though, so keep your panties on.

Another fact that is very obvious, is that guitar players Lee and Santana knows what they are doing. The fretboard caressing is fast technical and borderline power metal, but they keep their shit together and never cross that line over to Cheesytown. There is a lot of material for guitar buffs here, as the duo tends to live up to the classic heavy metal twin guitar, as founded by the original legends in Maiden and Priest back in the day, but of course with a modern twist. They keep the playing fast and interesting, even for a non-guitarist, and they know exactly where the line for ego-manifestation goes, and never over do their stuff so much that it gets boring.

The drum’n‘bass section is as solid as it can be, nothing to be picky about. Bassman Mount is quite audible and here and there he carries out on some smaller expeditions which I applaud, as much too often, he’s a tad low in the mix though (why does almost everybody keep the bass player down? Ridiculous!) The bass should be in your face, and as far as my judgment go, he is a good player. Drummer Meahl is solid as a rock, and brings out some twists and turns in his playing that never allows you to get tired of his choice of articulation. I really like the drum sound as well, which helps a lot.

What’s going on here you might think? Is this going to be a 10? Nope, that’s not where we are going, what are the downs then? Well, the album is really strong in the beginning and then it’s a downward spiral, that is quite normal actually when you think about it, but here it’s really noticeable. As far as I am concerned the album could have stopped after track 8, “Take it to the grave”, all the songs up to that one has all the components that keeps it interesting. For bad examples, “The great artifice” starts out really cool, but then turns into some metal-core smelling dual vocal fest with growling/clean vox and topping it off with just that power metal solo I hate. The last song “Rains of sorrow” actually got me angry with the cheesy keyboards (that are not noticeable anywhere else on the record), and with sensual whispering backing vocals. Come on!

All in all though, if you like classic heavy metal in general, but with a modern twist and really solid twin guitar playing, this could be the one for you. It starts out really good with some attitude, but sadly ends up in the back alleys of Suckville.
They had me fooled for a second, and I actually enjoyed it for a while, almost like getting a BJ from a bloke, it’s alright until you open your eyes and look down. That’s why it has to be a…

6,5

Information
Released: 2013
Label: Nuclear Blast
Website: Holy Grail Official Website
Band
James-Paul Luna: vocals
Eli Santana: guitars, vocals
Alex Lee: guitars
Blake Mount: bass
Tyler Meahl: drums

Tracklist
01. Archeus
02. Bestial triumphans
03. Dark passenger
04. Bleeding stone
05. Ride the void
06. Too decayed to wait
07. Crosswinds
08. Take it to the grave
09. Sleep of virtue
10. Silence the scream
11. The great artifice
12. Wake me when it’s over
13. Rains of sorrow

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