Releasedate: August 29th 2014
Recordlabel: Napalm Records
The Order of Israfel is a new band, formed in 2012 whose basecamp is situated in Sweden. But when you think this new band consist of newcomers in the metal world you’re wrong. Beating heart of the band are founding members Tom Sutton (known from Church Of Misery) and Patrick Andersson Winberg (known from Doomdogs).
The band has just released their first album and is on the road to become a highly appreciated name in the Doom metal world. At least, they will if you would ask me because WOW, what a way to introduce yourself with a debut album like Wisdom!
The album consists of 9, mostly pretty lengthy songs which are a mixture of doom, stoner and power rock. The album opens with title track ‘Wisdom’, which is a nice, long doom song that takes you back to the 70’s. With ‘The Black Wings A Demon’ the album speeds up to a nice power rock tempo, only to turn around 180 degrees again with down tuned song ‘The Noctuus’.
‘The Earth Will Deliver What Heaven Desires’ somewhat folky opening tune almost reminds me of ancient Indian tribes joined by hippies, and this song makes me want to scream PEACE MAN!! For 8 minutes long (side note: I’m more the ‘anti-hippie’ type of person).
With the somewhat strange ‘The Order’ during which the bands clarifies who they are by consisting of nothing more than them saying that they ‘are the order of Israfel’, we’re already halfway through and reaching the longest song on the album ‘Promises Made To The Earth’, which to my opinion just is a great track, but a little tóó long. Even the experienced listener has to make sure to have taken some caffeine before starting it, because else you’ll end up spotting too much dirt on your floor like me. Good thing that, after a maybe somewhat unnecessary ‘spoken word’ song ‘The Vow’, the album ends with another great song ‘Morning Sun (Satanas)’.
Aside the few flaws/downsides of the album that I mentioned, I still think that the album is really great and the gentlemen have done a great job. I’m much fan of Sutton his voice which can be doomish low as well as very energetic; it fits perfectly and drags you totally into the songs.
Great riffs, good drumming and a neat and tight recording added to that, makes this probably one of my personal highlights of 2014.
Rating: 85/100
Tracklist:
1. Wisdom
2. The black wings a demon
3. The noctuus
4. The earth will deliver what
5. The order
6. Born for war
7. Promises made to the earth
8. The vow
9. Morning sun (Satanas)