Agnes Vein - Duality
Agnes Vein are a three-piece from Thessaloniki, Greece and they have been dishing out their brand of colossal dirge since 2001 but only this year have they released their debut, a full-length 35 minute monster of a recording that blends Doom Metal,Thrash Metal, Black Metal, Sludge Metal and a old school Epic Metal approach into a style that is very uniquely their own. I don't know much about the band so its straight onto the review and this album titled "Duality" hasn't left my CD player all of the past week. Taking nine years to come around to releasing a debut album seems to have worked for them as these songs are very well thought-out and the playing is top-notch, they say sometimes good things take time and its the case with Agnes Vein.
Opener "Melkor" comes staggering through in at a lumbering pace and its heavy, dense and very foreboding. Vocalist Sakis Kioses manages to be threatening and melodic at the same time, a rare but very unique gift to have in this genre which in the case of Agnes Vein is very hard to define. The pace isn't lifted much in "In Orbit With The Cosmos", its just a slow motion juggernaut that bludgeons your innards. Its not really till you get the galloping drive of "Earendil" that the style changes in any significant way but even then it is still a mid-tempo sludge-fest in the vein of a energetic Electric Wizard or Ramesses. One of the more killer tracks comes next with "The Fall", this moody beast is a haunting creeper much like Monotheist-era Celtic Frost but only more atmospheric. The way the track builds to its pulverizing but slow and sickening climatic final section leaves you exhausted and crushed beyond repair.
The title track "Duality" is up next and its the more direct and straight-forward track on the album and also the shortest, here it sounds like the band is paying homage to the first wave of Black Metal bands like Bathory and its not the first time that you can hear a kind of Bathory influence coming through. The final track "Outro" neatly finishes this all too short album, the fact that the songs are so good means the album's running time seems much shorter than the actual 35 minutes. What sets Agnes Vein apart from most other band's with the "doom" tag is the amount of different musical textures that are interwoven from Electric Wizard, Neurosis, Jesu, Primordial, Ramesses, Celtic Frost and the early era of Bathory as well as the epic era of Bathory when they did "Blood Fire Death". The different dimensions to their approach makes this a very enjoyable and a very hard album not to be impressed by and one spin of this makes you instantly crave another. Because of all this, Agnes Vein can and will appeal to a wide variety of metal listeners, its one of the most impressive debut's of the year.
Opener "Melkor" comes staggering through in at a lumbering pace and its heavy, dense and very foreboding. Vocalist Sakis Kioses manages to be threatening and melodic at the same time, a rare but very unique gift to have in this genre which in the case of Agnes Vein is very hard to define. The pace isn't lifted much in "In Orbit With The Cosmos", its just a slow motion juggernaut that bludgeons your innards. Its not really till you get the galloping drive of "Earendil" that the style changes in any significant way but even then it is still a mid-tempo sludge-fest in the vein of a energetic Electric Wizard or Ramesses. One of the more killer tracks comes next with "The Fall", this moody beast is a haunting creeper much like Monotheist-era Celtic Frost but only more atmospheric. The way the track builds to its pulverizing but slow and sickening climatic final section leaves you exhausted and crushed beyond repair.
The title track "Duality" is up next and its the more direct and straight-forward track on the album and also the shortest, here it sounds like the band is paying homage to the first wave of Black Metal bands like Bathory and its not the first time that you can hear a kind of Bathory influence coming through. The final track "Outro" neatly finishes this all too short album, the fact that the songs are so good means the album's running time seems much shorter than the actual 35 minutes. What sets Agnes Vein apart from most other band's with the "doom" tag is the amount of different musical textures that are interwoven from Electric Wizard, Neurosis, Jesu, Primordial, Ramesses, Celtic Frost and the early era of Bathory as well as the epic era of Bathory when they did "Blood Fire Death". The different dimensions to their approach makes this a very enjoyable and a very hard album not to be impressed by and one spin of this makes you instantly crave another. Because of all this, Agnes Vein can and will appeal to a wide variety of metal listeners, its one of the most impressive debut's of the year.
1. Melkor
2. In Orbit With The Cosmos
3. Earendil
4. The Fall
5. Duality
6. Outro
