Velvet Viper
Cosmic Healer

The velvet viper is a velvety adder slithering around in the world of heavy metal. It started slithering in the early nineties in the remains of Zed Yago. Since then there have been a few observations, more frequently in the latter years and this is apparently the best it has been. Cosmic Healer is the new installation from this German band, and the press material claims it is their best one to date. That may be true, but if it is I see no real reason to bother with their music.

As with most vipers, originality isn’t the thing when it comes to this album. It is typical heavy metal with female vocals, and Jutta is quite vibrant despite having decades of experience doing heavy metal music. She may be vibrant in regard to the voice, but not in the creative sense. They press the typical buttons, and it is about as fresh as rancid milk, and as exciting as watching paint dry. I find that this album is missing imagination, ideas, freshness, it is positive that it is pretty short.

No bad, that is probably my most positive thought about this album. It lacks teeth and bite, it is also missing poison, I don’t think it is an album for anyone who wants to be entertained by fresh thinking, good ideas and things like that. The cliché with the swords that start it all, blades that are dull sound away at the start. And then there is heavy metal. Heavy metal like we never heard before, no that wasn’t right; heavy metal like we always heard before. There is no imagination and when the swords turn into acoustics at the end of the album I have long since fallen asleep from the boredom, and as an escape from the dreariness of this album. Who likes to hear the same old song on repeat over and over again?

If you are one of those you will most likely be entertained by this album, but there isn’t much point to it. We have heard stuff like this been done to death million times over, and this lack of fresh ideas among musicians is sometimes so paralysing that you just want to end it, never listen to music again or just crawl down a deep dark and silent hole just to avoid the demoralising sadness of humanity and its lack of good ideas. I find this album to be sad, and boring, not something I want to waste time listening to. If you are a fan of the standard heavy metal stuff there is probably a good chance that this will work for you, many such fans don’t like new ideas and if you are one of those this one will be perfect because there are no ideas and no surprises on it.

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