Title: Alamut
Genre: Sludge/Doom Metal with some Black Metal influences
Time: 28 min
Year: 25th February 2018
Rating: 73/100
After Last Resistance, this is another review about an EP that Synth Agency sent to me some months ago. And this is another review about a style not so common on these pages, but, surely, it's more extreme than the melodic metalcore of Last Resistance.
In fact, "Alamut", an EP by this young Italian trio after their debut demo in 2016, shows 6 tracks that will crush you through a kind of smokey and very raw sludge/doom metal clearly influenced by bands like Electric Wizards and Cathedral. The pace is usually slow and oppressive with few accelerations, the vocals are a sort of dark gurgling, and the general sound is really primitive and dry since, for example, here there is no lead guitar in any case. But Tannoiser (the moniker comes from the Wagner's "Tannhauser") are able to make a bit more dynamic some songs through abrupt and short black metal explosions in blast-beat, as in "March of Wrecks" and "The Void", both episodes belonging to the second part of the EP. It isn't a case if the band declare to be influenced also by bands like Mayhem or Forgotten Tomb.
Speaking about the two parts of "Alamut", I realized that the first one is slower, darker and more purely doomish if compared with the other part. Instead, this last one is more melodic (just a bit!), atmospheric (also thanks to some sequences without the guitar but with the bass), faster and blackish. Another (little) difference comes from the fact that, curiously, the songs of the first part starts always with an intro while the last 3 tracks, included the closing "Mekkano" (that, in some moments, reminds me a fuckin' lot of "No More Hate" by Autopsy!), are completely lack of intros.
Very curious is also the same title of the EP. Specifically, the Alamut Castle (that now is only composed of ruins) was a mountain fortress located in the present-day Iran very close to Teheran, and was the headquarter of an Islamic sect called Nizari Ismai'lis also named as Hashashin. This is a term that originated the word "assassin" which, in according to some sources, means "who consume hashish". And what do you see on the cover artwork of the EP? A link to the Hashashin: a cannabis plant!
So, the band (founded in 2015) is still very young, so there are surely some rooms for improvement. For example, I would like to hear a more consistent use of the black metal elements, now too few. But, anyway, we are in presence of a talented band, especially in the second part of "Alamut", without forgetting a track of the first half like "Necrophage" (where there are some screaming and torturing vocals that are very effective).
P.S.: a little curiosity about Leynir Booking and Prod, the label that released this EP by Tannoiser: it has organized the "The Age of Dead Christ European Tour 2018" of the mighty Necrodeath, whose, as you remember, I reviewed the devastating live gig in Rome.
Tracklist:
1 - Baba Vanga
2 - Paradacsa
3 - Necrophage
4 - March of Wrecks
5 - The Void
6 - Mekkano
Line-up:
Bruno Almici - vocals/bass
Francesco Bellucci - guitars
Davide Serpelloni - drums
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TannoiserBandOfficial
BandCamp: http://tannoiser.bandcamp.com/
Leynir Booking and Prod: https://www.facebook.com/leynirbooking
Synth Agency: https://it-it.facebook.com/agencysynth/
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