VADER - "LITANY" (METAL BLADE)
VADER - "LITANY" (METAL BLADE)
Metal Blade signed Vader last year, and now these sympathetic Poles have released their first Metal Blade album, "Litany". It's the aural equivalent of a tank driving in your face, I mean Tianenmen (sp?) square without the tank driver showing any form of common sense. Although the album lasts a (meagre) half hour+, it leaves the impression of perhaps a full hour of unadultered death and destruction. Doc's drums sound blast-furnace-in-your-face heavy and simply don't relent. Peter's staccato vocals know not what mercy is.
Some of the tracks are wildly focused and very short ("The One Made of Dreams" and "North"), some of them are longer and leave more space for heavy, slower sections ("Wings" and "The Final Massacre"). I like the longer ones most, because I've come to discover that a Vader track is like a Stephen King book: The longer the better, the more space for side tracks and extra cool bits that create more of a complete image. Exception to this rule is the onomatopoeic "Cold Demons" (about tanks), which is short but long enough :-)
"Litany": It's loud, it's full of energy, it's extremely powerful death metal, it's f&@kin' Vader.
RK
Written February 2000