|
Review:
|
Lammoth are a band from the Czech Republic despite
what their Myspace site says, and not to be confused with
the American black metal band of the same name. They have
been around since 2001 and this in their second full length
release, coming after 2006’s Reflections. The name, which
means Great Echo, comes from a region in Beleriand in J.R.R.
Tolkien's Silmarillion. Their music is very hard to tag,
Nightwish meets Rhapsody meets ELP is the closest I can
come up with after a thorough head scratch. Adorable Hanka
"Astarte" Plesná has a superb, powerful, expressive semi-operatic
voice, not too dissimilar in style to Kate Bush at times,
with lyrics in English. Opener ‘Into The Dark Lord’s Mind’
is proggish and powerful with Emerson esque spiky Hammond,
second track ‘Hope’ is a pacey power metal polka, and ‘Machine’
combines the two, a pacey power prog polka (try saying that
after a couple of vodkas). The waltz ‘Storyteller’s Inn’
changes the pace, with a touch of Jethro Tull (minus flute)
and Renaissance. ‘Redemption Game’ and ‘The Nameless City
Part 1’ are a pair of pacey power prog polkas, with a couple
of short interlinked instrumentals to follow. The epic ‘Westward
Evermore’ sounds like ELP and Yes gone power metal, while
the baroque closing instrumental classical piece ‘The Nameless
City Part 2’ could have come from ‘In The Court of the Crimson
King’ or Jon Lord’s ‘Sarabande’. Production, sound and mix
are remarkably good for an independent release, and all
the band are first class musicians. Scoring this is also
a real doozy because there is no benchmark, they are out
there on their own with their pacey power prog polkas (I
like saying that) which are influenced more by classic 70’s
prog rather than the modern versions like Dream Theatre
and Porcupine Tree. All I know is I like it, and if you
like power and prog metal then you will too. The gremlin
in the machine is getting hold of a copy, but it does come
as a rather nice package, you could try the email address
on the bottom of their Bandzone page, http://bandzone.cz/lammoth
, and their website in Czech is http://www.omadeg.cz/lammoth/
, a princely pacey power prog polka points score of 8.5
out of 10.
|
