The Raven Age – "Blood Omen"
Quoth the raven, "Blah, blah, blah"
(Guest reviewer: Magnus Jørgensen)
I don't like bands that have been handed it all. No band that I know of has turned a privileged background into proper rock 'n' roll. You can love metal from the bottom of your heart, but if you learned to play on a $4000 guitar and your parents pay for everything – and hand you a support slot on an arena tour when you want it – you're not going anywhere as an artist.
It just doesn't work that way. I can't think of any great metal band that doesn't have its roots in smelly rehearsal rooms and shows in shithole venues. I may be wrong, but I'm not, and we all know it.
So... The Raven Age. Their third album. Never heard the first two. But hey, you'd expect the son of you-know-who (and if you don't, keep it that way) to have a sense of what makes heavy metal bring joy, tears, and adrenaline to the fans. For all I know, this could be a decent metal band. Or maybe it's everything I expect from a band that never had to play a show in a basement illuminated by a single 40-watt bulb.
"Blood Omen" opens with the acoustic guitar intro "Changing of the Guard", and before they've even hit a beat, you know that the idea of this being a changing of the guard is like having the watchmen of Monty Python's swamp castle being the new defenders of metal. But off we go as "Parasite" hits you with... well, a damp paper towel.
This is what happens when a resistible force hits a movable object. It's all so easily predicted and impressively unimpressive.
Sadly, this modern take on heavy metal is as generic as it comes. The sound is neat, clean, loud, and without any dynamic range at all. There's everything you'd expect from a band that has nothing at stake. Lots of heavy grooves and double-bass drumming. Guitar harmonics, arpeggios, solos, a few acoustic intros, and verses going into bridges we've crossed a thousand times before paving the way for huge choruses in the vein of Dream Evil or Primal Fear.
Now, I love a chorus so outrageously huge it's threatening to part the clouds as much as anyone (perhaps except from the owner of this site), but these stick like rubber balls thrown against a concrete wall. Oh, and then there are some supporting growls, because if you have nothing new, exciting, or passionate to do, you might as well hedge your bets and do a bit of everything.
It's all competently executed, of course. These guys know what they're doing, and they've decided to do nothing but go through the motions. This is what happens when a resistible force hits a movable object. It's all so easily predicted and impressively unimpressive.
This band has no direction, no creativity, and certainly no danger to them. They're just... there. Competent artists in the way an AI is a competent storyteller.
But The Raven Age aren't awful. Not at all. In fact, I'm being way too hard on them. Drummer-guy does some nice rhythmic shifts and the guitar leads and harmonics are impeccable. Singer-guy has a lot of tools in the box, and he knows how to use them. And in this case, he's decided to make a nice stool.
And there's the problem. Why don't you try something, anything? This band has no direction, no creativity, and certainly no danger to them. They're just... there. Competent artists in the way an AI is a competent storyteller. So much skill, so little creativity. For fuck's sake, look at the song titles. The only things more uninspired than "Serpent's Tongue", "Nostradamus" and "War in Heaven" are the actual songs.
This is elevator metal that makes you wish you'd taken the stairs.
Rating: 2.5 out of 6
Genre: Elevator metal
Release date: 7/7/2023
Label: Music For Nations / Sony Music
Producer: Matt Hyde
(EDITOR'S NOTE: While this album does seem to be getting positive reviews pretty much everywhere else, and while my guest reviewer does tend to dislike a lot of good music for no good reason at all, I'm betting he's on the money with this one. I mean, it's allegedly the same kinda stuff as those Killswitch Engage and 5 Finger Death Punch guys. Seriously, stop bothering with jocky shit like that already.)