Three years have passed by since the Norwegian symphonic black metal band Old Man's Child released their last album, Revelation 666 - The Curse of Damnation. Now they are ready to reenter the scene with their new album In Defiance of Existence. The style of the music is symphonic black metal a la
Dimmu Borgir, which means a nice mix of moody keyboard parts with fast guitar riffs and drums.
The front figure and mastermind of the band is Galder (formerly known as Grusom), who also joined
Dimmu Borgir in 2002. Galder does the vocals, the bass and the keyboards and also he plays some guitar on this album. Jardar, who is also a founding member plays lead and acoustic guitar. On the drums Galder has borrowed Nicholas Barker from
Dimmu Borgir - Barker has a past in Cradle of Filth, and he is indeed a very positive addition to Old Man's Child. Finally Gus G. from
Dream Evil plays a couple of guest solos on the album.
Old Man's Child has always produced high quality music, and this new album is no exception - on the contrary. The technical level is very high - the compositions are as always very good, and the guitar riffs are in general good too. What distinguishes this album from former Old Man's Child albums is however the drums. The before mentioned drummer adds a new dimension to the music with his energetic and brutal drumming style. Galder delivers a pretty good vocal job too.
The album is very well produced, and that can come as no surprise as the album has been recorded in the famous Studio Fredman (In Flames, Arch Enemy, At The Gates, Hammerfall). Galder has produced the album himself, and Fredrik Nordström has done the engineering.
A friend of mine who is not into black metal (not mentioning any names here) heard this album, and he told that he liked all the intros of the songs - all the songs were great until the screaming vocals came. Well, I have to agree that the intros are really cool - mostly because of Barker's insane drumming. However contrary to my friend's opinion - I like the rest of the songs too.
Felonies of The Christian Art opens the album, and it is a very fast and energetic song. There is a great flow in the song, and the song varies in a good way with fast and heavy riffs, keyboard parts and guitar leads.
Black Seeds on Virgin Soil will have to be my favorite track on the album - it starts out with an acoustic guitar intro, and then builds up from there. The build up takes about a minute before the vocals start, and the song progresses into a new stage. Overall this is a very good compositional song. The title track
In Defiance of Existence is a very good example of one of the songs with a cool intro - suppression of spontaneous air drumming is not an option here!
To conclude this is a very good album, which I would rate 6.8 if our rating system allowed it. The album has pretty much everything you could expect from this genre - the reason why this album doesn't reach the higher grades is simply the lack of that final magic "ingredient". What that ingredient is I am not quite sure - but it's not there.
Written by
Anders Tuesday, February 18, 2003
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