Nosferatu

When the promo pictures for ex-Tad Morose lead vocalist Urban Breed's new band were first released, it sure looked to me like it was a black/death metal band. With the corpse paint and full black metal garb as well as images of fire and blood surrounding them, one could easily make that assumption. However, with Bloodbound, nothing could be further from the truth. Teaming up with the song writing duo of guitarist Thomas Olssen and bassist Fredrik Bergh (Street Talk), these guys have taken the Lost Horizon approach by painting themselves up and immersing themselves in their alter-ego characters. With Nosferatu, Bloodbound offers up some of the best melodic true/power metal that I've ever heard from a debut album since the brilliant Awakening The World from Lost Horizon. It's a concept album that takes place over the course of some 25 centuries; from the dark ages to the present. The story revolves around the main character fighting the evil demon Nosferatu to try and restore the balance between good and evil. In doing so, he must visit the dark reaches of man's inner evils over the centuries to try to understand the mind of his enemy.

I was surprised to see Urban Breed leave Tad Morose. I thought their last album Modus Vivendi was one of their best efforts to date. Tad Morose has always one of those consistently good bands but I guess it was time for him to move on. With a voice as strong and powerful as Urban Breed's voice is, Bloodbound has landed the perfect vocalist for their brand of ultra-catchy, true/power metal that also shows quite a bit of Iron Maiden worship in their sound and song writing approach. The Maiden influences are ever prevalent right from opening track Behind The Moon with it's galloping riffs and harmonized guitars. Into The Dark continues with more great, energetic and spirited heavy metal with an amazing sense of melody. These first two tracks are a great introduction but the album really switches into high gear with the trio of the title track Nosferatu, Metal Monster and Crucified. Nosferatu borrows from Maiden's Fear Of The Dark with it's foreboding intro consisting of clean guitar and bass harmonies then like the aforementioned track, rips into big thematic and galloping riffs. Urban's voice just kills on this track and the chorus will get stuck with you for days. Metal Monster sees Urban up the ante even more to deliver an absolutely killer vocal performance on one of the best all round melodic metal tracks I've ever heard. Crucified continues with the extremely high quality melodic heavy metal yet this one infuses more power metal speediness along with more of the often used harmony third guitar riffs.

This album absolutely smokes from start to finish with other tracks like Midnight Sun and the Eagle Fly Free clone Fallen From Grace being solid standout tracks. The final track, On The Battlefield sees the band taking a more dramatic and progressive approach ans showing influences from both Maiden and Lost Horizon. Aside from the abundance of guitar harmonies, the lead guitar lines are flashy and technical but not overdone. The main strength of Bloodbound seems to be in it's ability to write very catchy and melodic true/power metal and utilizing the full potential and strengths of Urban Breed's voice almost to perfection. They have the perfect recipe to be potentially be one of the best melodic true/power metal bands the genre has ever seen. The vocals and choruses to each and every track are absolutely top notch and way above average for most bands in the genre. This is the type of album where your favorite tracks change just as quickly as the days of the week!

The only real down side to all this (depending on your tastes) is that even as amazingly solid as this album is, they seem to be a bit formulaic with their song writing approach. Also, apart from the vocals and guitars, which sound great, the overall production could be better. The drums and bass sound thin and need to be more punchy and solid. These aspects in no way detract from the quality of songs on this album. Many of us (older) metal fans can relate as before digital technology and advances in sound reproduction made even the smallest stereo units sound great, we were forced to listen to music on some pretty shitty equipment. Despite all the shortcomings of bad sound, a great song is a great song and will still sound good on whatever it's played on. With a little more variety in the types of songs and arrangements and better production, this would be an almost perfect album as far as I'm concerned. With Lost Horizon on hiatus while still looking for a new singer, these guys are coming in at just the right time. So what if it's gimmicky power metal...when it's this good, gimmicks don't have to cover up or detract from shortcomings, they just add to the overall image and impact of the band and Bloodbound is set to make a big one!! This one's definitely going to make my album of the year list for 2006.