Stormlord - The Gorgon Cult
Scarlet Records

file under black/pagan metal

David: Until recently the Italian band Stormlord was unknown to me. I cannot say that I was really looking forward to listening to them all that much either since I honestly am not too crazy about most of the Italian black metal scene. The bigger was my surprise when ‘The Gorgon Cult’ turned out to be a more than decent release.

‘The Gorgon Cult’ is Stormlord’s third album. The music is from the epic variation and a plethora of influences from different genres like thrash and gothic are also noticeable. This results in the band sounding close to for example Cryptic Wintermoon, although they still manage to give things a little twist of their own. At least there is more than enough variation. The band does not shun to go all out as far as speed is concerned but does not forget to build in enough melodic passages to keep things interesting either. The use of accompanying keyboards in these parts manages to really create a special atmosphere as well. Especially a track like ‘The Oath Of The Legion’ managed to convince me. Towards the end of the CD there is also a decent Iron Maiden cover in the shape of ‘Moonchild’.

Another thing that I was rather pleased with was the fact that there is also a multimedia section to be found on the disc. In this area there is detailed info about the band and the various members as well as a collection of mp3’s from several side-projects (which range in style from straight heavy metal to gothic). Also a video-clip for ‘I Am Legend’ is included as well and in contrary to a lot of other videos this one is actually worth watching. If you like epical melodic black metal, you could do far worse than checking out Stormlord, I for one am most certainly going to give their other two albums a try as well.

Rating: 83/100 (details)

http://www.stormlord.net

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