GHREMDRAKK — Je m'exalte (review)

GHREMDRAKK — Je m'exalte album cover Album · 2007 · Black Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
3/5 ·
Vehemency
Although I'm usually some sort of a sucker for raw sounds that can be on the verge of noise, sometimes I do think that a noisy production can weaken even black metal. Belgian Ghremdrakk's second album, Je m'exalte, belongs to this category although it’s compositionally beautiful.

Musically, Je m'exalte provides almost astral sounding occult black metal, a nice mixture of aggression and a hint of sadness ("De Asceet") with an insane sounding vocalist. All the songs are relatively long, from 6 to 9 minutes, so Je m'exalte is not an easy bite. The compositions are epic and they have bombastic culminations with synths (”Servitor, Servitor”). The drumming style is quite unique in Ghremdrakk: instead of general blast beats, the drummer seems to favor a sort of a death metal blast beat, which is a nice feature.

However, the snare drum and especially the crash symbals top all the other instruments quite strongly. This results in an album where the drums dominate everything else, and it becomes almost cacophony when the drummer uses the previously mentioned blast beat style. I’m fine with this in small doses, but sometimes it does get irritating, and I would love to be there producing this album and turning down the volume knob of the drums just a bit. Luckily the instruments are enough apart from each other so a careful listener won’t miss the guitar riffs, for example. Just don’t try to listen to this album without headphones, I’d say...

With a production of this sort, it is not easy to go through a 62 minute album concentrated the whole time, even though the last 6 minutes of Je m'exalte include a beautiful piano only song. The compositions are good and Je m’exalte is far from a bad album. I would still favor the previous full-length Sterrenpracht, though, due to the more considerate production and also slightly better compositions (such epics as ”De Sfeer Van Daath” from Sterrenpracht are hard to beat after all).
Share this review
more

Review Comments

Post a public comment below | Send private message to the reviewer
Please login to post a shout
No shouts posted yet. Be the first member to do so above!

Review Index

Member Zone

Username:
Password:
Stay signed in

Metal Subgenres

Artists Alpha-index

MMA TOP 5 Metal ALBUMS

Rating by members, ranked by custom algorithm
Albums with 30 ratings and more
Master of Puppets Thrash Metal
METALLICA
Buy this album from our partners
Paranoid Heavy Metal
BLACK SABBATH
Buy this album from our partners
Moving Pictures Hard Rock
RUSH
Buy this album from our partners
Powerslave NWoBHM
IRON MAIDEN
Buy this album from our partners
Rising Heavy Metal
RAINBOW
Buy this album from our partners

New Metal Artists

New Metal Releases

Rise of the Black Fang Metalcore
KILLGRAVE
Buy this album from MMA partners
Die for Us Technical Death Metal
WEREWOLVES
Buy this album from MMA partners
The Goblin Sessions Heavy Metal
THEM
Buy this album from MMA partners
Tormenta De Arena Metalcore
VORAGO
Buy this album from MMA partners
Infinite Metalcore
FUTURE GHOST
Buy this album from MMA partners
More new releases

New Metal Online Videos

ScapeGoat Official Lyric Video
FIREFLAME
Bosh66· 3 hours ago
FireFlame - The Last Ride (Official Video)
FIREFLAME
Bosh66· 3 hours ago
Fervence - Hezekiah (Official Music Video)
FERVENCE
Bosh66· 3 hours ago
Fervence - The Silent Wall
FERVENCE
Bosh66· 3 hours ago
Fervence - Corrosion (Visualizer)
FERVENCE
Bosh66· 3 hours ago
More videos

New MMA Metal Forum Topics

More in the forums

New Site interactions

More...

Latest Metal News

members-submitted

More in the forums

Social Media

Follow us
Follow us on Twitter Become a Facebook fan RSS Feed