By: Anders

Posted: Jul 10, 2006

Angel Blake is the new brainchild of Marko Tervonen, who used the control the six-stringed axe in The Crown. It would be obvious to think that he would continue to unleash the insane death/thrash as he did in The Crown, though things aren't that obvious. Now Marko delivers dark and sinister heavy metal with a good deal of rock in the mix, and a lot of dark atmosphere. On this album he has handled all the instruments himself and has called upon Tony Jelenovich (ex-B-Thong, ex-Transport League and ex-Mnemic) to handle the vocals.

The compositions are clever made and offers a wide range of inspirations and hard-hitting music, starting off with 'The Force', with its wicked disharmonic lead, thrashy main riffs, heavy as fuck bass and the tortured vocals from Tony. He handles his job on this album very well, it can't have been an easy task to hit it off to the dark and varied music, but he delivers a strong and emotional job all the way through the record. His raw to smooth vocals and all his variations handles the job well, even the processed pieces sounds great and adds to the whole of the music.

We are getting a good deal of great riffs on here, Marko hasn't lost that touch yet, most of the guitar play on here, are actually quite good and a is a big part of why this record works as well as it does. The guitars drive the songs forward, together with the stomping rhythms and vocals, and then add the icing of the cake, with the different leads and small acoustic details and so forth.

Production-wise the album is a heavy fucker as well, a dark and heavy sound that pushes the music out of the speakers, containing a lot of energy and sheer power. I actually think the production has a lot to do with the music working as well as it does, as a stale and complex sound, would have drowned the pure rock n' rollish energy the music contains, and that would have been a shame.

This is a good debut album from Angel Blake no doubt about that, a lot of good dark and rocking songs, containing energy and emotion. Marko has some great song writing skills and handles the guitar better than most, and has apparent skills on the other instruments as well. The music is somewhat Danzig inspired, together with a heavy scent of "Draconian Times" era Paradise Lost, not something that bothers me that much, and to be honest "Angel Blake" is better than the latest offerings from the good Glenn Danzig and Paradise Lost as well I guess. On top of the Angel Blake's own offerings, we get a well performed version of 'Paint It Black', my favourite Rolling Stones classic, that doesn't make things worse. Sprint down to the pusher and give this record a spin, and let yourself dive into the world of Angel Blake. Besides all this, it will be exciting to see what Angel Blake churns out next, now when Marko has added guitarist Christian Älvestam, bassist Örjan Wressel and drummer Janne Saarenpää to the line-up!

Rating: 7½/10

Angel Blake website

Angel Blake interview

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