Vintage Flesh - The Eyes That Glared At My Agonies
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Published on Thursday, 18 November 2010 19:00
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Written by MuNkY
| Artist | Vintage Flesh |
| Album/CD Title | The Eyes That Glared At My Agonies |
| Release Date | 2009 |
| Label | Unsigned |
| KillingBoxx Score | 3.5 |
| By It Now On |  |
Some Dark Metal you probably haven't heard of yet.
A couple of weeks ago at Rock & Shock 2010 the band Vintage Flesh stopped by the KillingBoxx booth to see if we were interested in checking out their CD
The Eyes That Glared at My Agonies. I happened to be standing there at the time and jumped at the opportunity to write this review. Some times our music department gets a little backed up. So I figured I would lend a hand. Now normally I don't write music reviews, but today I'm stepping out of the ToyBoxx for a minute to give this CD a listen. I am a big fan of pretty much all forms of metal music, actually just most forms of music in general, and also a fan/supporter of independent artists in the music scene. So I thought this was a no brainer for me to write.
Vintage Flesh is a black/gothic metal band from New Hampshire. As mentioned above, they are currently unsigned and independent. Right out of the box that had me a little worried. I've listened to a few independent black metal bands just coming out recently in the Philadelphia area and the verdict was not good. Most black metal bands are independent for a reason. A lot of them have no talent. They have no musical talent, scream unintelligible vocals into the mic, slap some 5 cent art with a pentagram on the cover of their CD, and hand out their album at Cradle of Filth shows. Nope, sorry, actually kinda mad I gave your CD a chance. But let me say that Vintage Flesh is NOT one of those shitty black metal bands.
Vintage Flesh has kind of a hard style to pin point. They have an old style european gothic horror metal base to all the songs on this album. But there is some influence of some 1970's punk, like Misfits or Sex Pistols mixed in. I am not sure if this was intentional. But to me it worked well together. The CD is also very un-produced, which to me is also not a bad thing. It adds to the grit and grime and the overall feel of the album. It almost makes the album feel like it was playing on an old school victrola or something. The entire album has an overall spooky feel to it that you would loose if it was super mixed and produced to perfection. The instrumentals to the album are great. Definitely what a black metal album should sound like in my opinion. One track to note is Waiting for a Body (Track #8 on this CD). I personally think this is one of the best black metal songs I've heard in a long time. It's got a good almost waltz like feel to the main verse portions of the song. And the vocals fit the feel and pacing, very dark, very evil, almost operatic. Then the track switches to a more fast crazy pace, almost like a punk song, for the chorus portion of the song, but still stays very dark. It is an extremely well done song. But then again, it is a very well done album overall.
Despite all my likes of the album, I will say that Vintage Flesh has one fatal flaw, the vocals. Not so much the lyrics themselves, or the singing style, or the "screaming vocals" as many people would call it. Where I think the flaws come in, is that the singer doesn't pick one solid style to sing in for the whole album, or even for an entire song most of the time. Sometimes this works, like as I mentioned above in the track Waiting for a Body. But most of the time it doesn't. This is where being a very under produced album is a bad thing. I wish more of the songs had the vocal feel similar to Waiting for a Body, where it had almost a waltz like quality to it. There were a lot of times where there was a really good gothic horror type guitar going, and the singer sounds like a bird grabbed a microphone and started screeching away. Come on man, what happened to those awesome opera style vocals? Most of the album is like this. The vocal style of the singer at the particular moment doesn't fit the instrumental style going on. Most black metal music you almost have to ignore the vocals a lot of the time, and look deeper into the overall feel of the instruments. But a good amount of the time on this album the vocal style was so contradicting to the music it was hard to ignore.
Overall I think Vintage Flesh is a band with a shit load of potential. Very that have an amazing feel to the music, one of the best independent black metal artists I've heard in a long time. I love the gothic horror feel to the album. I also love the gritty feel that a lot of independent artists try to produce out of their albums. I think with a little refinement and production to their vocals and singing they have a good future ahead of them. I look forward to hearing more music from these guys in the future. I suggest if your a fan of Black Metal music that you check these guys out. They are definitely worth a listen.
