AngL – is the second issue of IHSAHN as a solo artist and following the first one The Adversary after a two years long break. I do not know this first solo release of him and so I started working on this review completely unbiased. I wanted it to be a surprise for me what the ex-Emperor frontman is doing nowadays...

The surprise worked very well, because with first song called Misanthrope IHSAHN sounds very moreish. But in the middle of the second song the surprise already changes into confusion. What is he doing there? I normally appreciate progressive songwriting very much, but this is a bit too much: I have no problem when he changes from the middle-part, which is very calm anyway, to the keys, but why is he adding the clean vocals over all this? No doubt, it is a good idea, but it would have been better to build up a new song of this theme for example. Anyhow, it seems everything is a bit in shambles on angL. Sometimes it sounds more like just putting as much ideas as possible in a row. This seems to be the main thing: it’s too much on some songs and so they sound overloaded to me, while some other songs are monotonous and could have been much shorter. They tend to sound way repetitive and a bit boring by that e.g. Unhealer - though Mikael Åkerfeldt (Opeth) is doing some guest vocals in this song! After the fourth song, which is reminding a bit of the slow and calm parts of some old ballads by Iced Earth (sounds not that bad by the way!); the fifth song Malediction is offering some more speed again. As well the last one Monolith sounds way more aggressive – aggression that I expected to hear more often on a record done by IHSAHN. And to tell honestly in the face of this fact: perhaps I was a bit more biased than I expected... ;)

Apart from this the album is settled on a high musically level anyway. All compositions are done by IHSAHN himself and he recorded all the instruments played by his own, with the exceptions of the drums and bass-guitar. In this case, he got help from Asgeir Mickelson and Lars Nordberg - both members of Spiral Architect. The vocals on angL are offering the full range from being powerful and aggressive on one hand and calm and sensible on the other hand.

Nevertheless I am unable to approach closer to this material. There is nothing giving me a kick or a blast – nothing that catches me and my interest at all. Not even a bothersome earworm to find on it ;)
So after all I will rate it fairly and average 5 of 10 points – now it is up to you out there to give it a try :)