It was with some excitement that I got this album; for whatever reason (as a general rule) I seem to enjoy modern heavy metal over the original music it tries so hard to emulate. Perhaps I just prefer modern production, perhaps it's the slight thrash influence that gives it a bit more of an edge over the old, more rockin' vibe of the forefathers, most likely I have bad taste. Anyway: Sumerland may sit in a genre I quite like but they kinda suck.



Multiple problems. Basically, real shit vocals and perhaps 3 different riffs throughout the album.



The vocals, first up: well Phil Swanson did a terrible job in Briton Rites, and their For Mircalla album had some of the biggest riffs in the world; with weaker tracks he has even less chance. I'd heard he has a fairly versatile vocal style so I was willing to give him another chance, but yeah he still sucks. Coming across as a whiny Ozzy-meets-Witchfinder General type dude, but with a range of maybe 3 semitones, it's just relentlessly terrible. It's like hearing your uncle sing War Pigs while drunk, but with less range, and for fourty or so minutes, and with worse lyrics.



Now, bad vocals in heavy metal, as a very vague generalisation, don't always ruin an album but an album can never be great with bad vocals (see: aforementioned Briton Rites). Luckily, we don't need to worry about it here because the riffs are fairly average in the first place. Most of the tunes tend towards a kinda uptempo feel- think Priest's Anvil off Painkiller but a little bit faster, with the exact same rhythmic accents, in the exact same key, track after track. Identifying individual songs is pretty difficult, to say the least. There's a few slower tracks too- which go nowhere, as the riffs aren't weighty enough and the vocals aren't interesting enough to sustain a slower tempo. It's just this big old turd of incredibly half arsed riffcraft and songwriting; a lot of the tunes sound unfinished, and by and large there's no real climaxes, no parts that really make you pump your fist, beyond that nifty little breakdown in Timelash.



It's fairly bad music, and one would feel that if an album of this mediocrity was released in a more demanding scene, it would be completely ignored. This ticks off all the tropes of heavy metal- it's kinda fast, the production is a bit retro, there are riffs- but in no way is it worth hearing. You name it- heaviness, atmosphere, catchiness- it lacks it. There's way better albums out there.