vote
8.0
- Bands:
DOLMEN GATE - Duration: 00:39:41
- Available from: 04/26/2024
- Label:
-
No Remorse Records
Streaming not yet available
Let’s say right away that this debut was a nice surprise: the Portuguese band was born in 2021 from the ashes of Ravensire, of which Alex and Nuno – drums and bass respectively – decide to collect the epic metal legacy, expanding its boundaries and style.
Dolmen Gate, logo in essential gothic contrasting with the misty cover, already authors last year of the good although still immature EP “Finis Imperii”, arrive on the long distance with a record as fresh as spring water despite their music being extremely traditional : classic heavy metal, with strong epic overtones, linked both to the 80s and to the folk-tinged hard rock of the previous decade, as well as a certain dose of doom/rock. Given that there are no particular weak points, one of the strong points seems to be Ana’s voice, gritty and elegant – close in timbre and style to those of Alia O’Brien of Blood Ceremony and Ann-Sofie Hoyles of Spiders – which fits perfectly with the band’s proposal, giving a different interpretation to the genre and decidedly particular nuances.
The album opens with a song that bears the name of the band, but it is not a ‘self-celebratory’ piece (think for example of the iconic “Manowar” and “Iron Maiden”) but rather a short acoustic intro with a medieval, simple scent as evocative, signaling us to enter the magical and pagan world of “Gateways Of Eternity”.
Less than a minute later we are in the heart of the album thanks to “Rest In Flames”: perhaps it is too early to talk about a classic for a band at its debut, yet this ride is the perfect prototype of the piece that one expects to be able to sing live ( verse and chorus have a perfect fit on the melody); the Portuguese musicians don’t seem to struggle in the slightest to construct an excellent piece, certainly indebted to Maiden influences, which combines beautiful riffs, a dirty and street style (thanks to the rhythm section) and a strong melodic taste.
That the boys from Lisbon have the gift of immediacy, without being banal, is confirmed by “The Oath”, where the sustained rhythm of the first half of the piece fades into progressively darker tones, becoming dirty with doom (the classic one of Candlemass and Solitude Aeturnus); of opposite sign “Chambers Of Magic”, the single proposed as an appetizer on social channels, which looks at a robust heavy metal tinged with epicness, enthralling and pleasantly on the shields, another raw gem of the album, thanks to the guitars of Kiko and Artur, who continue to string together riffs and merge into expressive solos, anything but exercises in style or ‘circumstance’.
The level of the compositions that follow remains more than good, but we mention in particular the rocky and melancholic “The Wheel” – with a vague hint of Doomsword – and what is in fact the last piece (the title track is only, again and unexpectedly, a fleeting instrumental intro), or the long “Betrayal”, which recovers all the characteristics mentioned so far, to which we can add a folk feel à la The Lord Weird Slough Feg, certainly one of the band’s points of reference together at Manilla Road, Brocas Helm, Thin Lizzy, Rainbow and Ironsword (just to stay in Portugal).
A special mention also goes to the frenetic and decidedly rough drumming, which recalls (with due proportions) that of Blind Guardian in their early days in terms of power: the Lusitanian formation is not afraid to pound and chooses a production that is not so much for the subtle, which we appreciate as it gives a nice heaviness to the entire work.
In a sea of glossy productions, bombastic social proclamations and ultra-digitally retouched photos, Dolmen Gate present themselves as concrete and pure as the underground should be (a term so abused that it is often emptied of its true meaning), putting above all the strength of own music, which has the precious ability to conquer.
