Vigour - No Gods To Praise

Now onto something all the more darker. Vigour are a black metal band from Greece. Their debut album, No Gods To Praise has been gaining plenty of attention in the underground and the band are eager to get it officially released. They actually got in touch with me through Twitter, which is happening more and more now and I was eager to check them out as they were not a band I'd come across until recently.

Tracklist:-

1. No Remorse
2. In Memoriam
3. Seeds of Hate
4. Creation Of Failure
5. Fallen
6. Vigorous
7. Rape of Hope

8. Phantasmagoria

Vigour call themselves a melodic black metal band and on listening to the opening bars of No Remorse, I can see where they are coming from, as their riffs have that almost symphonic sound to them. The vocals are the other hand, are blasts of shrieking evil! They can seem over the top, in volume anyway and alongside the rest of the instrumentation, make for a head shatteringly devilish sound. Another thing that separates Vigour out is their majestic song lengths, where they prefer to let things organically take place as opposed to cutting things short for the sake of drip feeding listeners. They allow their song writing to take over.

As In Memoriam builds, it dawns on me that this is probably one of the heaviest black metal releases I've heard in a long time and while this type of black metal is popular amongst the more mainstream metal fan currently, Vigour's particular brand is very good. I know it's only the second song and I should wait a bit longer before writing a synopsis, but there, I've done it now! There's a lot of inherent technicality and subtlety amongst Vigour's sound too, with the guitars weaving subtle melodies that sit in the middle of the production, which by the way is very good and pitches everything a nice, loud volume. If you think this record is a brief encounter with the dark-side, you're wrong. It's a slow, painful descent into hell (in a good way!).

Vigour's symphonic sound reappears in Creation of Failure. The guitar-work in Fallen is some of the best on the record, especially during the extended instrumental passage in the middle of the song. The sky outside has begun to darken and the rain is pouring, which I guess is the desired effect when listening to No Gods To Praise! Vigorous is a bit of a misleading song-title, as while there are moments of over exertion here, the music stays a very a steady course and almost has you in a trance, such is it continued melody throughout. To be honest, my words may not be doing this record justice because as it closes with Rape of Hope and Phantasmagoria I am utterly transfixed. 

This was what I wanted, nee hoped for from black metal and thankfully it's been delivered by a band that shuns histrionics and just performs with honesty. Now, I'm going to put my best panda face on and scare people with heart problems (not really, I'm too nice!).

You can stream both Fallen and Phantasmagoria on Vigour's bandcamp page below:-

Let's hope that Vigour come to the attention of a label soon and get their album more widely recognised.

You can follow them on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/Vigourgr.