Vreid - Milorg

My first album purchase of 2009...

Epic first track "Alarm" opens with some nice mellotron-ish cellos before the band kicks off about a minute in. Nice breakdown in the middle, with harmony guitars that bleed into the next part of the song, then the opening theme is revisited towards the end. They put the longest track first!

The second track ("Disciplined") feels like a continuation of the first. Good riffs and some nice guitar harmonies.

Track 3, "Speak Goddamnit" has a pretty brutal distorted bass sound at the beginning. After about 2 minutes there's some clean guitar that reminds me very much of Annihilator's "Never Neverland" album from about 16 years ago, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Next it's "Blucher", nice track, maybe a bit unremarkable (or maybe I'm just tiring of writing track-by-track descriptions). Then along comes the instrumental "Blucher pt.II". More harmony guitars and a nice simple riff, which melts into some acoustic guitar and organ towards the end. This bit sounds like the theme from World in Action!

"Heroes & Villains" picks up the theme from the previous track in a faster metal style. All in all I'm starting think this album holds together pretty well as a whole work.

Track 6, "Argumento Ex Silentio", brings in some more clean guitars with the classic sound of the fifth that raises chromatically (think James Bond theme!) and some more strings which again sound like they're from an old mellotron. Some unusual chord progressions follow.

Milorg. The final track. Starts of quietly and builds. Rather mid-tempo for metal of this style, but it works. Nice tempo changes too. Ends quite abruptly.