Year: 2024
Total Time: 37:09
Label : Season Of Mist
The international supergroup consisted of the Norwegian Blasphemer (aka Rune Ericsen), the American David Vincent, the Canadian Flo Mounier assisted by the Dutch bassist Ype Terwisscha van Scheltiga and the Portuguese guitarist João Duarte is releasing its second album after 2019’s “Something Wicked Marches On”. With its predecessor having some doses of progressive sound and the songs stretching a bit further, “Epic” seems that has fewer turns and detours, following a more straighter path.
Vincent has chosen to sing in a unique way, either as a baritone with recitations, or with a more organic-warm rock sound. The chemistry of the three musicians is very good and it seems that one carries the other, especially Mounier has left the throttle and the blastbeats in many tracks, so as to follow Blasphemer with the familiar Mayhem-like riffs painting a post-apocalyptic landscape. This is evident in songs like “Miserere”, “Nature’s Fang” or the groovy “Mephisto Manifesto” where everyone seems to need the other by his side, in order to unfold his talent and push the boundaries.
In the lyrical field, Vincent writes about Strength and Honor, elements decisive for his life if not fundamental, as he himself explains and hopes to pass them on to others. The lyrics have a double meaning in several cases, in order to be digested by the listener, making the audition of “Epic” a very interesting moment. This is helped by the very good production of Jaime Gomez Arellano, a warm and sufficiently digitized mix. The visual part was edited by Daniele Valeriani, known fom his collaboration with MAYHEM. A bold yet understated aesthetic featuring the three-headed eagle with three different crowns, accompanied by distorted symbols of passion and the Penrose impossible triangle, a triangular impossible object, an optical illusion consisting of an object that can be depicted in a perspective drawing, but cannot exist as a solid object.
“Epic’ is a very nice mix of old and new, a symbiosis of all the cool things we love about Extreme Metal. Straighter than “Something Wicked”, more organic and less labyrinthine it shows an evolution of VLTIMAS. It will be very interesting to see how the band proceeds with this in the future.
Rating: 7/10
Editor: Dimos Karadimos
Related Link: VLTIMAS – Facebook Page
