Points: 7,5

It's really surprising how many interesting bands are cavorting around in Belgium, was this country hardly noticed before in respect of Metal. Without a doubt DAGORLAD is one of these bands. Actually, DAGORLAD is a duo, consisting of the two Brussel-based lads Count Zaroff (aka Phillipe Gandiblue), who is writing all the music and does the programming and the singer AOD (aka Frederic Mercier) who also writes the lyrics. Furthermore Tinuviel gives herself the honour to appear as a guest singer.

The End Of The Dark Ages is already the second album but the first one for the LSP Company. In musically respect they put themselves into the drawer for Dark Atmospheric Medieval Metal. I agree with them absolutely. But still there are also strong references to the melodic black metal as well as I can hear influences of Dargaard and Weltenbrand. The End Of The Dark Ages is a concept album, which narrates the story about the warrior Mallek who got elected by the god Alean, to overthrow and to annihilate the evil emperator Zul'Dar and his empire.
It starts with an intro which is dying away pretty uninspiringly, without establishing a transition to the rest of the album. One of the highlights on this album is Revelation To Mallek. This is also the first song where Tinuviel gives her first tryst. But she just restricts herself merely to some spoken words. Other tracks to point out are The Bulls Of Itarus and Neflit, Demon From The Death. Unfortunately this album ails in diverse musical deficiencies. It is also noticeable in a negative way that there is only one person who's responsible for the entire instrumetal ensamble. Every musician develops an own style over the time which you can retrieve, no matter what instrument he is playing. And that's exactly what happens here! Although all the songs are structuraly varied, they sound very one-dimensional, because the same style is repeating in every instrument. Count Zaroff has played, programmed and recorded the guitars, the bass, all keyboard sequences as well as the drum parts by himself. This is especially distinct in the medieval instruments, whose entries sound as the same or at least pretty similar. And sometimes, a few keyboard lines are also a bit too obtrusive. The bass in general goes under but in return the drums are programmed very well. And in my personal opinion, only one guitar never creates that powerful sound two guitars do. At the end Tinuviel appears again ... exclusively with spoken words.

Upshot: DAGORLAD have delivered a rather remarkable album but its force of expression is narrowed because of the flaws I mentioned above. Nevertheless, it can't do any harm to keep an eye on this band. Then once realized lacks you can make up for the next album ...

Dagorlad