Shrike - Sieben

(CD Album Review)

***1/2
Interesting Black Metal from Germany!

Shrike are a very cool band. Hailing from Germany they play Black Metal with a few Progressive Metal elements thrown in and have a great Pagan, back to nature visual element to them similar to what Sabbat had. The artwork is visually striking and compliments the music brilliantly. An odd little quirk to this album is that the tracks are in order of length so each track gets longer as the album goes on, do we start with 'Kreise' which is a straight forward Black Metal track with blastbeats, shredding scorched tortured vocals etc and then it progresses to the finishing track 'Grimmassen' which is quite progressive. So the album goes in stages revealing more and more of what the band is capable of. Evolving which each track. It's a very handy trick using just five tracks and a total length of thirty minutes to their full advantage.

The first couple of tracks are quite straight forward "Shrike" in particular is quite Thrashy then we get 'Die Farben der Sehnsucht' which brings to mind later day Bathory or even Mayhem. The vocals in particular in this track remind me of Attila Csihar. It's very atmospheric and intense builds to a great climax. All in all it's not earth shattering but everything is where it needs to be. It's solid Black Metal album by a band that have their own thing going on. There's certainly nothing wrong here, it's a good little album that is definitely worth checking out.