INFERNAL ANGELS – Midwinter Blood

The wintertime is the most suitable of all seasons to have a cold Black Metal album in order to taste the frosty hell and its raw evil. Black Metal, ever since it emerged in the late 80s/early 90s, endlessly channeled the burning coldness and sinful doings by creating a long line of trill style melodic riffs (serving as one of the main kickers of this kind of music). Those morbid riffs, partly taken from Old School Death Metal, were given a slight boost and became the weapons of the bands of the black forlorn. As the sub-genre progressed, it brought over elements of symphony and several melodic techniques from other sub-genres as Death Metal, Thrash Metal and Heavy Metal, all in order to manifest the so-called Blackened Melodic Metal. The reason it is “so called” is because every Melodic Black Metal band issues its melodies in a different mode. There are bands that tend to use Heavy Metal “Iron Maidenish” style of riffs to create fine melodies and others that remain true to usual Black Metal form while using trill scale madness over high-end notes made by guitars and bass.

Looking over the blazing Italian group’s new, and their second, release Midwinter Blood, one can’t ignore that there is something addictive within those cold and enchanting trills and Infernal Angels uses these, with an awesome ability, to form their own freezing darkness covered in blood. However, with all their greatness playing fast paced tracks as the amazing “Melody Of Pain”, “Tutto Quel Che Rimane” (from Italian – All That Is Left), “A New Era Is Coming” and “Inesorabile” (Unrelenting), there are some major shortcomings around the album which are hard to ignore.

As mentioned earlier, Infernal Angels are one of those bands that tend their Black Metal, on its melodies, with a respect to the Old School form of the subgenre. The fact is that the majority of Black Metal bands, as opposed to other extreme sub-genres as Death Metal and Doom Metal, have a propensity on the Old School ways because no matter what, Black Metal is stronger and evil on its old structure and approach. In Infernal Angels’ case, all is well when it comes to establishing a solid base of melodies for their tracks, yet whoever knows the history of Black Metal, some bands just won’t tire of using the same riffs and also the same style of play to craft their mind wishes. Infernal Angels play 99.9 percent of the time, melodic trills, which are an amazing feature indeed, yet this element seems to come to a certain paved road that just won’t end and those same outlined melodies return again in a slightly different form on other songs. Of course, it is unbelievable that this is all that there was to offer by this band. Those featured riffs are great for a couple, maybe three or four tracks, but they can also make a totally different impression and even turn into being a nuisance. Standing by those riffs, there is the drumming section, strong as it is, as it also runs on the same path and that is the reason why the drumming sounds like a copied set of lines.

Another aspect that is hard to ignore is the inconsistency in the overall mixing and mastering. It looks like the finalized version of the album wasn’t checked out and that is why several of the tracks, including “Sangue” and the better “Prologus Odii”, sound as if a small monster is screaming in some farther room that is certainly not near the studio. Also production wise, the vocals seem to be clearer when they aren’t being molested by tons of effects and additional channels (a word to the wise behind the wheel of production).

In general, Midwinter Blood is a solid frozen like type of Black Metal filled with tons of melodic lines and armed with a decent production. The album’s melodies have their own sort of magic and are well spread around the album, however in future albums, Infernal Angels must learn to create additional melodies because on this current release there are too many similarities between the existing ones. Moreover, whoever is in charge of finalizing the album, might want to do a double check on his work because a certain level of consistency must be met.

Infernal Angels’ have great potential when it comes to creating Old School Melodic Black Metal and in the future they will have their way on the veteran Nordic Black scene.