Review celtachor - In the Hall's of Our Ancient Father's 2011

So, for the second day in a row I take on a demo recording, but this time by a band that has actually recently recorded their demo and not rereleased it after more than 20 years. Therefore this demo is much more necessary, anyway it is made by an irish band called Celtachor of whom I have never heard before I received an email from the band asking me to review their demo be it a good, bad or indifferent review. So Celtachor, here you are:

First of all, Irish metal is something I am not very familiar with, I know some irish music like Cranberries, The Corrs and U2 along with Irish metal band Cruachan which I actually interviewed some years ago. The latter is actually a band I come to think about when I listen to this band as they are a bit similar in style using the celtic influences in tandem with raw and extreme metal. Celtachor have a love for whistles which they use quite frequently and it creates a contrast between beauty and shall we say brutality or something similar. It is an album in seven tracks among which the first one is a short intro, it plays for about 36 minutes if I am to believe my music playing program. It is an album (I call it that because I forget to write demo) where the vocals are raw and screaming/grunting something like that, not the ordinary death or black metal growling, but something less polished and more aggressive I would say, kind of like said Cruachan, Ensiferum, Finntroll or Wolfchant to name a few that use the aggressive vocals similarly. The production is, shall we say raw? I think that is a good word for it, it is a bit unpolished and a bit amateurish compared to many bands of today. Still, it is a demo recording and the production do sound a lot better than many demo recordings I have been in contact with.

So, what kind of review will it be then? I think I’ll give them a positive review even though the rating points maybe in direction of something indifferent but that is because I do not use a different rating scale between demos or albums recorded by very established acts which makes it somewhat unfair but that is how I do it. I think the band do show some really interesting music with this release, the songs are overall good and even though there are some slight flaws which I will go into more later, it is still really good in its mix of beauty and beast so to speak with whistles making a nice contrast to the vocals that just screams out whatever message there is to scream out. The album opens with an intro that feels to me like something quite unnecessary but then it comes to a track called Rise of Lugh which is a really good track with some fantastic whistle melodies in tandem with the band’s aggressive and raw style of metal. This style is something I think they should work on and even though the second track to me is the best one there are still lots of good music left in the other tracks as well which is why it is well worth it to listen on after said track.

There are as I said some small issues that I have which I think might be worth pointing out, even if it is only for the band or whoever reads. I think the production should be cleaner, it would help the interaction between beauty and aggression without taking away the raw feeling of the music as it might even enhance it with better production. I also think they should add some clean vocals to complement the aggressive vocals as they can be tiring over a full length album, it would also create a bigger diversity which the band will need when they want to make a full length album of maybe 50 minutes. Added to this overall thing there are some small niggles, the vocals does not flow all the way, there are some parts where it feels like a slight hesitation in lack of a better term to describe it. At some lone parts it also feels like there are some strange interruptions both in instrumentation and vocal work, these are things I do believe a better production will cure however and in the grand scheme of things they are not that large as I think the album in general is quite good.

I would in the end say that this is is a rather good album especially considering it being a demo but also it is good on its own merit. Some things can improve, I have mentioned them in the paragraph above, but all in all I like this release and with more experience under their belts I am sure this band will put out something really interesting.

HHHHHHH

Celtachor In the Hall's of Our Ancient Father's

Celtachor
In the Hall's of Our Ancient Father's