Madder Mortem – Eight Ways
Peaceville Records - 2009
By Simon Brand
I have often found female-fronted metal bands put more emphasis on the gender of the singer than the actual music or their voice. "Look at us, we've got a woman singer!". I have also noticed that most of these vocalists are used in the same way, performing soaring, operatic wails over some chunky guitar lines, but Agnete Kirkevaag comes across as much more versatile than your average female vocalist. She shifts nicely between straight clean singing, more operatic voicing and a kind of strained shout which actually works quite well. So it all starts off looking quite good for this band.
The problem I have with this release is that all of the music going on behind the vocals feels rather uninspired. Riffs are generally minimalistic, but not in that clever, subtly evolving way, taking the more boring route instead. Most of the album seems to bank on the power and versatility of Agnete's vocals rather than songwriting or interesting development. I find that the best parts of the release are when the band slow things down in their acoustic or jazzy interludes, creating a more full sound, or when they do some experimentation with dissonance.
It is difficult to pinpoint a genre here, the guitars sound like they belong on a progressive metal album, but there is not enough time-signature or structural variation going on to really grab that tag. There is an abundance of gothic, doom and symphonic influence floating around as well, so possibly "dark progressive metal" is a sensible call.
The guitar tone presented is very chuggy for most of the release, with an emphasis on the lower register which makes a sort of separation point between the vocals and the rest of the music.
Bass is relatively inaudible for the majority of the album but there are some moments where it is placed higher in the mix ("I am here guys").
The drumming is the only instrument which I really found interesting here, some nice tribal beats going on in places and militaristic passages dotted about help to keep things fresh in the rhythm section.
There are definitely some parts of this release which I truly enjoyed, but by the end I felt that they were outweighed by the sections I felt like I needed to do something else at the same time to prevent boredom setting in. I wouldn't particularly recommend it to anyone except fans of the band's previous releases or people interested to see what else can be done by a female singer in the realm of metal.
Official Madder Mortem Myspace
Official Peaceville Records Website
