UMUR
"The Ignorant Crown" is the debut full-length studio album by Danish death metal act Muldjord. The album was self-released in November 2011 and made available for free on the band´s website. Muldjord is a one-man act consisting of El Senator who has made it his goal never to charge his fans money for his music (that has since changed).
The music on the 10 track, 39:38 minutes long album is well composed and well played death metal. Since the drums are programmed we can just as well get it out of the way. They don´t sound more artificial than how drums sound on your average digitally recorded death metal album but they don´t sound organic either. The combination of a well sounding programmed drum sound and a skillful programming result in the drums never being a distraction and that´s all I ask from programmed drums. besides the well programmed drums it quite obvious that El Senator is a very skilled musician and composer. He skillfully handles both bass, guitar and vocals. The tracks are well written and memorable incorporating elements from a couple of different death metal styles. There are plenty of tempo changes to keep things interesting and some melodic hooks too, but I wouldn´t call the music melodic death metal. This is not the most serious death metal album out there and there are several humourous hints in the lyrics as well as a heavy metal ode in "All Hail Metal" but when that is said Muldjord can still be pretty aggressive and brutal, so this is not an all out fun project.
"The Ignorant Crown" is quite a consistent and powerful debut album by Muldjord and I found myself well entertained by the music. If musicians begin releasing high quality products like this for free, the labels and the musicians who want to make a living out of playing music are really in for trouble. A 3.5 - 4 star (75%) rating is warranted.