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Ordala By: Jonathan Mariante |
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In recent years, many bands from Italy have been making waves in the metal scene; Rhapsody, Labyrinth, White Skull, Domine, Drakkar, among others. It looks as if we have a "new wave of Italian heavy metal" on our hands. Ordalia, apparently, are looking to ride this wave. They are a band from Italy who has just released their first album, "Return Of The King". A number of musical influences show through in this band. They describe themselves as a "marriage between doom metal and epic metal". The epic side of their music shows on the first two tracks, "Blood And Fire" and "Crystal Tower", which are similar to Manowar's "Defender". The third track is "White As The Snow", as faster-paced, hard rocking biker anthem ("On my Harley D, I'm a stranger, I'm a free man, a modern crusade for a modern war"). Next up is another epic tune, the title track, which is eight minutes long. Then comes the song "Ordalia", another rocker. Next is "Cry Of The Banshee" (no, not a cover of the Exciter classic). This is where their "Doom" side starts to show, as this song is very Sabbath-influenced. The next song, "All I Ask (When I Pray) is a more up-tempo, straight-ahead rock number. This is followed by another Sabbath-like tune, "Dance Of The Fairies". After this comes the next epic-length song, "Mormegil". An almost ten minute long number, there is also a lot of Sabbath influence is this one, and a portion of it is played "unplugged". Then comes "Wonder Of Devotion", a ballad, also "unplugged", which is quite nice. Finally, we have the closing track, "Mystical Isle Of Avalon", which reminded me of Angra. Ordalia are a talented band, if a bit amateurish, but their music lacks direction a bit. They want to incorporate influences of both power metal and doom metal into their music, but it makes things a bit patchy. Also, the production of this album left something to be desired. It sounds like it was recorded in a garage. Granted, this is an independent, and underground release, and the band probably paid for it out of their own pockets, so it can't sound like it was produced by Roy Thomas Baker, but even so, I have heard bands in similar situations whose production still sounded halfway decent. Another problem is these guys play a bit too slow. Nothing wrong with a slow tune here and there, but heavy metal is supposed to be fast! For all those flaws, however, these guys do have potential. They just need to speed things up a bit, iron out the rough edges, be a bit more focused on their direction, and spruce up their production values. Then they might be ready to join the ranks their fellow Italian metal brothers have achieved.
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