Discography
CARVING A CRIMSON CAREER
Nifty mix between power/speed metal instrumentation and crowy death-gargling. I bought this album after hearing the wonderful title track alone, which was perhaps a bit too impulsive on my behalf, but I can live with it - at least now I have that masterpiece on CD. I'm pretty sure that song was inspired by Annihilator's brilliant thrash-classic Human insecticide, and it's every bit as great - one of the best tracks of this year! The music is absolutely breath-taking from the soft acoustic intro to the final double-bass thumps. Superb sing-along quality and awesome guitarwork throughout. This song could easily have been one of metal's all-time greatest if: 1. It hadn't guttural death vox, and 2. The lyrics ("We will not fail! Steel must prevail!") hadn't been inanity to perfection. That's odd to say the least, since "Carving a crimson career" is such a great, witty title. The surrounding songs are of more average quality, but still good listening. Brimstone have a very good flow in their music, plays fairly heavy, with a great deal of conviction, and neither the production nor musicianship is for me to poke sticks at. The intense but poorly written anti-Christian lyrics could cause a few smiles perhaps, but that's okay here, because you won't understand a word anyway (except for "Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill with pride!" in Pagan sons :) ). Other than that, I think Running Wild is at least a significant influence for this band, and the speed/harmony/lead guitars and arrangements in some of the songs here can be traced back to the eras both before and after Under Jolly Roger (and Breaking the waves probably fulfilled some ten year old Riding the storm-fantasies these guys have carried with them). They haven't written anything original anywhere, but still rock hard and feel fairly fresh due to the interesting power-meets-death eclecticism (they don't overfill the speakers with guitars like death bands usually do, mostly just typical speed riffs and double-bass drumming) and good production. And since I'm getting more and more into cut-throat vocals, that aspect doesn't bother me THAT much (despite the fact that Jan-Erik Persson truly has one of the worst growls I've ever heard). And I mean, it could be worse - he could have been another dog-flirting Geoff Tate/Michael Kiske-clone. At least the growling here adds a certain "Umph!" to the music, and I don't think it clashes with it. Nice album, but you should check out the title track first, and only consider acquisition if you like it. If you don't, then you can just as well forget about this album completely, because they are all kinda similar.
Best songs: Carving a crimson career; Pagan sons; Tunes of thunder