Holy Grail – Ride The Void
Prosthetic, 2013
6/10
Holy Grail has
followed up their debut, Crisis In Utopia,
with a highly technical, melodic, thrash-inspired album that aims high but
ultimately fails to elicit much excitement. The instrumental “Archeus” leads
off the album with a promising start before kicking into “Bestial Triumphans”.
“Bestial Triumphans”, along with the next two songs, “Dark Passenger” and
“Bleeding Stone”, really typify the whole album. Most songs are mid-tempo
gallops or fast thrashers that have potential, but two aspects of Holy Grail’s
approach dampen my enthusiasm. First, the technical guitar flourishes that
populate Ride The Void like an album
from old shred label Shrapnel, while impressive, are excessive and quite often
seem out of place. Second, the clean melodic singing and a production with
little bass suck all attempts at heaviness from the album. Quite simply, if
this sounded like an honest-to-goodness metal album with balls and if the
guitar noodling was toned down a bit, Ride
The Void could be a great album. I lost interest after the first four
songs, and it was a relief when the slow ballad “Rains Of Sorrow” closed the
album. Give Holy Grail some credit for doing something different in a world of
retro-thrash clones, but this style of melodic thrash-lite doesn’t cut it. I’d
be willing to bet these songs sound better live, so it’s worth getting out to
First Avenue early if you’re going to the Anthrax show tomorrow.
Holy
Grail performs Thursday, April 4 at First Avenue in Minneapolis as support to
Anthrax, Exodus, High On Fire, Municipal Waste.
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