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Released on January 23, 2015 via High Roller Records
It seems that every few weeks another band decides to form to pay homage to the classic (and of course the best) era of metal: NWOBHM. Some of these bands slavishly copy the NWOBHM blueprint without trying to add any additional ideas themselves to create a fresh and relevant sound. Luckily Trial aren’t one of these groups as with Vessel they have attempted (and largely succeeded) to take their songs in several unexpected directions.
The band are a twin-guitar metal five-piece who are clearly obsessed by King Diamond and Mercyful Fate. Drummer Martin Svensson, bassist Andréas Olsson, and Andreas Johnsson on rhythm guitar are the engine room of the Trial. Ellström performs superbly on lead guitar throwing out tremendous solos left, right and centre which are a great complement Johansson’s penetrating falsetto vocals.
The band formed in 2007 but waited until 2010 before releasing a fairly routine demo. This was followed-up a year later with the album The Primordial Temple, which wasn’t particularly bad but I personally felt that it was slightly derivative and didn’t offer anything particularly new. The stand out features from that particular album was the previously mentioned human air raid siren called Linus Johansson and his scary vocal range which shattered my beer glass and the solos of Andrew Ellström. So, so far so average really.
Towards the back end of 2014 Trial released the song ‘Where Man Becomes All’, which was a decent enough effort and showed that the band had cranked up their musical prowess by several notches. The tune was a thrashy power metal song with King Diamond-like vocals and some nice back-and-forth twin guitar chemistry.
The band has clearly built upon this song and improved their musical skills even further as Vessel really is a step-up again for them. While the album itself only contains seven new tracks as they have a running time of between 3 and 13 minutes you actually get a lot of metal for your money.
Each song adds something slightly new and different while retaining the Mercyful Fate and NWOBHM core; the galloping riffs and twin guitar attack is ever present. For example, the title track is a doom-folk number while other songs such as ‘Where Man Becomes All’ edge towards the more extreme end of the metal genre, in fact you could almost suggest that these are death metal songs at certain points; conversely tracks such as ‘Ecstasy Waltz’ are more transient doom-laden affairs. The highlight of the whole album is ‘Restless Blood’; a 13 minute epic which has enough in it to keep the discerning metal head excited all of the way to the very end.
So in summary, if you like classic heavy metal then give this a spin. Most of the tracks incorporate a multitude of influences from other genres to keep the listener amused all of the way through. Vessel is also a quantum leap for the band in terms of songwriting too. I only hope that this album can help the guys’ breakout as they have definitely found their own distinctive style and (high-pitched) voice.
