Review Summary: This means war!
Devoted agents of steel from Helsinki, the five-piece known as Chevalier slash and crash through 45 minutes of metallic busy-ness, long on spoken word-intros, galloping warrior narratives, instrumentals and outros, short on choruses. They’ve studied their Fate and their Omen and recruited a deliriously excellent singer in Emma Grönqvist. Subsequently their first full-length is packed with knotty epics of clashing swords and cosmic apocalypse likely to lock up your stereo.
The iron-clad skill of journeyman bassist Sebastian Bergman seems the glue that holds Chevalier’s colossal odysseys together, twisting and burbling along the speeding and marching tangents of cuts like “A Warrior’s Lament”. For all of the album’s soaring, grinding rollercoaster changes and grandiose moments, very little actually sticks to memory. Emma’s final scream at the end of the 8+ minute megalith “Curse of a Dead Star” makes the neckhairs twinge, and the album’s centerpiece “Stormbringer” (no, not that one) is like a melodic oasis in a desert of musical restlessness, guitars chiming and charging hard over triumphant verse and strong chorus, two guitars flashing like fire from a silo – a beacon of hope for the band’s future.
Full of promise and all the right influences, if Chevalier reign in the thorny digressions and throw in some choruses, the world will be their enchilada.
