For decades now rock music has divided its genres into slivers so that every specific , particular nuance can be catered to in an ever decreasing insular grouping. Prefixes and suffixes abound and genres get compounded to create Chimera that purport to be the next big thing.  Not just a case of everybody jumping someone else’s train but people hijacking it nicking a carriage and respraying the bottom portion and calling it the Blackened thrashabilly express.

Black Royal from Finland could be forced onto a train by a journo but this reviewer does not want to be the fat controller that does it. This quartet combine the groove of 90’s Entombed with big dirty New Orleans riffs and have produced a long player of big balled headbanging sludge bastards!

Lightbringer is the band’s first full length and is based around the concept of mankind’s naïve trust in false idols and belief systems.  The overall feel of the album is of defiance and disdain rather than the rage often displayed when musicians are moved to rail against theologies.

Opener Cryo-Volcanic is full of huuuge bludgeoning riffs that are carried along on a groove laden slab of Death metal. This is no widdly widdly tech fest, this is chest bursting throat tearing molten mayhem. Pentagram Doctrine is a similar beast whilst Self Worship and Salvation that follows it bring in a stoner crust and Seventies Doom influences respectively. The latter getting a little bit psyche and other worldly before getting some seriously heavy groove going.

Black Royal can change gear pretty easily as they show with Denial. A crust punk blast that drops into a big stoner crater every 30 seconds.  Interval training for the pit folk!

The title track is packed with infectious melodies and a great hook which has me humming it well after the last note has rung out segueing into The Chosen which is a gigantic sounding song. It builds and builds into a tribal gothic entity that doesn’t crush just absorbs and renders motionless any object or space around it.

Dying Star opens things up a little and allows some air into the listener’s lungs before charging into stoner doom Valhalla at the end, whilst New World Order is a Death/Doom slice of menacing melancholy with blunt choppy guitars breaking up the gloom.

The lilting acoustic Ou(t)roboros reminds us of Man’s tendency to repeat our mistakes swapping one false idol for another.

Black Royal have made an exciting album. One that blends the ferocity of Death metal with the ominous barrage of Doom whilst still allowing each track to breathe. There is plenty of piss and vinegar within the tracks to make the pulse race. I look forward to hearing more from this lot.

(7.5/10 Matt Mason)

https://www.facebook.com/blackroyalmusic

https://suiciderecordsswe.bandcamp.com/album/lightbringer