Fuck I love this album! When you strip everything away and just get back to basics – to bare rock and metal you’d end up with a band like the oddly-named Odcult. Big riffs, great vocals, killer guitars and an innate sense of power and melody and this Swedish three-piece have it nailed.
Looking at the band, the artwork and their name you might imagine Odcult to sound ‘doomier’ than they are but they’ve taken the drive of Sabbath without the gloom and brought together their many years of playing in various bands and projects in both punk and hard rock bands and created something that is both rooted in the 70’s yet fresh and exciting.
Opening tacks ‘Unhallowed’ and ‘Luna were all I needed to hear to know this 10 track sophomore effort would be a keeper (I’m scrambling to track down the debut as I write). This is like vintage NWOBHM for the modern age and along with bands like Kyng its both heavy and yet easily accessible to fans of all kinds of genres.
To quote their press “The original idea for the music was to capture the feeling from that good old rock music that was created during the 1970s, and then add the energy that you can hear in the punk genre.” and whilst you can certainly argue that the punk influence is largely covert in that this is certainly a rock album, you can’t deny the energy.
Tracks like ‘The Realm’ really manage to excite with their spiky power and wild guitar: these are some finely crafted songs and for me there’s not a dull moment on here. Three songs in I was hooked.
The remaining seven tracks are perhaps even better than that auspicious opening salvo from the swirling fuzzed out psychedelic metal of ‘Bleed For Me’ to the heavy as hell drive and trust of closer ‘Turn to Dust.’
This is going to be an album on heavy rotation for me this year and one for fans of everything from early 70’s metal to the newer revivalist bands out there right now.