Year of release: 2019
Label: Iron Bonehead Records
Rating: 6,8 / 10
I always meet new releases from Nightwolf with great joy - even though they all sound the same, each and every one of them successfully sends you to the past shrouded in a magical haze when a white man still remembered his destiny and place in the Universe. Almost any work of ETERNUM, BLOOD STRONGHOLD or RUNESPELL is a masterpiece, especially if this is your first acquaintance with Nightwolf’s works... but “Voice of Opprobrium” smells like a failure.
“Voice ...” is RUNESPELL’s third full-length album, but it's hardly full-length. There are only 3 real songs on it, with a total duration of about 22 minutes, and three long instrumental tracks. It’s scary to say, but all the instrumentals are based on the same melody, where only the guitar tone and couple of notes are changing. If they were entitled as a conceptual series, such as “Acoustic: Part I - II - II”, this could still be justified. But in this case, it's just a hackwork. In addition, the instrumental tracks are not good enough to occupy half the album. There is simply nothing except the main melody. The melody quickly falls into memory, and then these tracks turn into annoying interludes that make you press fast forward button.
Things are not going smoothly with the songs either. If the title thing is a classic work from Nightwolf, eferring to old GRAVELAND, then the remaining two are quite primitive by RUNESPELL standards. If it was something from from the repertoire of the old Poles from the Temple of the Full Moon, I would not say a bad word, but the Australian musician has already accustomed me to his ornate, multi-layered things that always conceal something else, no matter how much you listen to them. “All Thrones Perish II” and “Ascendant” have no such effect - these are just good and intense songs. Thus, I can declare that “Voice of Opprobrium”, to my sincere regret, has become the weakest of Nightwolf’s albums in the last 5 years or more. Perhaps it was not necessary to rush with its release. An experienced warrior should know when to sit in ambush and when to attack.
English (UK) 
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