The Italian Doomsword plays heavy metal straight from the eighties, unlike the thousand and one other Italian metal bands, who walk in the shadow of the leading Italian fantasy oriented metal band Rhapsody. Although Doomsword’s music is nothing new, it certainly is refreshing to hear an album that sounds like old school bands like Candlemass, early Manowar, Warlord and maybe even in a small way old Bathory; slow doom-like heavy metal with guitar riffs that come straight from the days of old. The sound of the album reminds of the eighties and Deathmaster’s excellent vocals only add to that atmosphere. While this band is Italian the music is all about Northern European mythology, and I must admit it fits the music perfectly. My only real problem with this album however is the enormous amount of repetition; most songs consist of a very limited amount of guitar riffs, that get repeated over and over, and to make matters worse, most songs are well over 6 minutes.

The music is very powerful and catchy and really sweeps you along like the bands of old used to do, but the huge amount of repetition really brings this album down. Nevertheless the music is extremely well played with the necessary doses of atmosphere and excellent guitar solos; listen for instance to the last minutes of the fifth song “For Those Who Died With Sword In Hand”. If you dig old school heavy metal and really don’t mind repetition then this album is certainly worth checking out!