Review: SCALD – Ancient Doom Metal

Year: 2024
Label: High Roller Records / Metal Star (local edition)
Rating: 7,8 / 10

It's no secret that the return of SCALD was one of the most anticipated and promising comebacks even in our era, when everyone who has ever held a guitar returns to the scene. The great album ”Will of Gods Is a Great Power" was and remains, perhaps, the closest work to the Viking era of BATHORY if not in sound, then in spirit. At the same time, it was lucky enough to get to the West and make a noise there, so today the reissues of "Will...“ come out on multicolored vinyls in civilized countries, and ”Ancient Doom Metal" was immediately released in Germany. When High Roller finally set the release date for the new SCALD album, I immediately offered to license it for Metal Star without even listening to a single note. After all, firstly, this band simply could not disappoint, and secondly, its members seem to have a more or less acceptable worldview (only the bassist raises questions).

As we know, SCALD ceased to exist in 1997 due to the death of vocalist Agyl. Agyl was not only one of the founders of the band, but also hell of a singer. Therefore, it was probably stunningly difficult to find a worthy replacement for him, but it worked out. Felipe Plaza Kutzbach is a real deal. Firstly, he is Chilean, although he lives in Sweden. If that's not enough for you, Felipe plays in DESTROYER 666, heads PROCESSION and was a guitarist of NIFELHEIM until the band split up. But the most important thing is that his singing is fucking mighty. If a man has an innate talent, it is immediately obvious. Felipe has a truly masculine, fantastically strong, expressive voice. His style of performance is not similar to Agyl's in general, but his falsetto (alas, it is used too rarely) is simply identical. SCALD are very lucky to have such a new vocalist.

As for the music, there were no surprises for me personally, but for someone (especially those who expected the band to record unreleased tracks created shortly before Agyl's death) it is disappointing. Having not yet listened to anything from "Ancient Doom Metal", I was convinced that the album would turn out to be similar to the work of reborn GODS TOWER, and I was not mistaken. In fact, GT and SCALD have a lot in common: both bands were founded in the early 1990s, both recorded their fateful albums with a very specific analog sound in 1996, both broke up due to the death of one of the founders, and then revived. And although GODS TOWER recorded "Steel Says Last" in Homiel, and SCALD in Sweden, they sound the same: bright, strong, clear, loud. This is a modern high-quality metal sound in a positive sense. Compare it with the sound of the band EREB ALTOR, which is very similar in genre and style: it seems almost the same, but EREB ALTOR are terribly boring and academic, and SCALD are on fire. Of course, some listeners had subconscious hopes that SCALD would give an ancient sound in the style of a debut, but I never believed in it. Unfortunately, old musicians have a strange prejudice: for some reason they think that listeners need all this fancy production for tens of thousands of dollars, to hear every note. But in fact, they only need it themselves. Anyway, the sound on SCALD's new album is great, so there's nothing to complain about.

All my criticisms relate directly to the songs. I would like to describe them with the word “hasty”, but this may cause incorrect associations. It's not that they are too fast (the pace is partly slow or medium) or made in a hurry (on the contrary, it's quite obvious that musicians prepared them for a very, very long time). They are simply... excessively dynamic, as if compressed into a tight spring, which causes a feeling of oversaturation. It is typical for Doom Metal to let every chord breathe, and this feature of the genre sometimes makes it unbearably boring. But in the case of SCALD, the opposite is true: they seem to constantly push their songs forward, not allowing any fragment to be in the foreground for more than one or two moments. ”Ancient Doom Metal" has a whole Northern Ocean of outstanding riffs and chords, but you don't have time to feel them, because the next fragment is always propped up from behind, and an endless queue of other fragments is impatiently waiting for their turn. The transitions from verses to choruses occur almost without pauses, and at the first listenings you won't even understand what happens. The songs on the album last around 7 minutes averagely, and this is critically not enough, because to comprehend the abyss of sound information that they contain, you need at least 10 minutes. To my great shame, SCALD forgot that silence is sometimes the most important tool in the arsenal of the musician; the contrast between deceptive calm and a sharp explosion always makes a stronger impression than a series of explosions.

So that you understand correctly, the musical material itself, that is, the bricks that make up the songs, are gold of the highest standard. The lead guitar performs real miracles (and, by the way, works partly in the BATHORY style, unlike everything else) so often and easily that it looks impromptu. Although, of course, there is a lot of hard work behind these solos. Problem is, these elements are not quite correctly arranged. When the music subsides, you can tell it was stunningly powerful and vibrant album, but it is hard to answer what song you did like the most. I'd say it was “The Liberating Spells of Fire”, because it's the only one with a really accented chorus. Other songs merge in memory into a solid mass, from which only individual bumps like the main riff of ALU (My Protection)“ or a line about “my own sepulchral bonFIIIIIIIIIRE!!!” from the second track stick out.

The physical edition from Metal Star was released in a special digibook format with a booklet expanded to 20 pages. Like the original CD, it has a bonus track. The design is slightly different in terms of image quality. There were several lazy technical solutions in the original design, which the full-time Metal Star layout designer corrected with the help of his own skills, modern technologies and a strong word. From an artistic point of view, the design fully corresponds to the lyrics of the songs, which mix Nordic mythology and fantasy motifs. Fans of The Banner Saga should like it a lot. You can buy a CD at Possession. Details on a video.