Gravdal
Sadist

To Gravdal I would like to say, congratulations on having one of the hardest logos to read in the history of metal. I almost didn’t review this on account of not having a band to name in the review. That said on to the music. Gravdal like to make noisy, caustic black metal in the vein of Twilight of the Gods era-Gorgoroth, though this is not nearly as polished. The production being harsher on the ears works here, it’s not so raw as to be a cloud of fuzz but it is far from clean. In fact it’s probably just about perfect for black metal.The production when combined with the slower passages of the album causes me to think of old Celtic Frost, though the vocals are far higher though I wouldn’t call them raspy, vicious sure, but not quite raspy. The correct word escapes me to describe them so I’ll just have to settle for liking them a lot. There isn’t much here we all haven’t heard before however it’s all pretty damned good. The tempo switches up quite a bit so it never gets stagnant on that front. I think I like these guys more when they get into dirge mode, which is a rarity for me. It’s raw but solid sounding old school black metal that owes quite a bit to Celtic Frost and Bathory. It’s hard for me to have a problem with that.

[Visit the band's website]
Written by Kyle Huckins
November 24th, 2008

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