Ophthalamia

A Journey in Darkness

This is a little different B.M. band. Lots of great riffs with some good old Black Sabbath inspiration. I don't like those "happy tunes" that they put between the good parts to make a song, those parts sucks. It is the man behind this band and you might know him from that weird band called Abruptum. Jon of Dissection is the guy behind the voice and here he sounds a lot better the he did on the Black album. Dan Swanö has produced the thing so it's almost bound to be great. It is that good as well from time to time but I don't if listen to it to often anyway because the sucky parts between is very annoying. Overall is it a fairly good album.
Rated



Via Dolorosa

So it seems that there has been a bit of development in the Ophthalamia camp. Maybe it's because there is two new faces in the line up. Jon has left the band and is replaced with Shadow. This guy has a much better grim singing voice so it sounds very cool vocally. The riffs are if possible even better on this album but most important - Those annoying parts on the debut album is not as annoying anymore, yes they are still there (for some damn reason) but they sound better and fits the music better. Other then that has the songs more harmony and the vocals really lifts the music to a new dimension. Three of the songs and a piece of a fourth has lyrics in Swedish, and in this case it sounds very cool. The lyrics are also printed in English for all our foreign friends. There are two bonus tracks on this album that shouldn't have been there at first, first an ordinary Ophthalamia song and last a very good cover of Mayhem's classic Deathcrush! A big plus is the long running time of 68+ minutes. This is another very strong Swedish release of 1995, let's hope that 1996 gets to be just as good.
Rated


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