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Metal Covenant  (www.metalcovenant.com)

Cor Scorpii - Attergangar
Reviewed by Tim March 2006.

Norway's Cor Scorpii, with remains from bands such as Windir and Vreid, hasn't laid in silence since the departure of the late Windir front man, Terje Valfar Bakken. Cor Scorpii's debut demo Attergangar holds four songs recorded at Studio 1184 and Amla Metal Studio.

At a first listening of Attergangar, I notice how well the compositions work. Very well blended aggression with not least a real dose of melodies. It is obvious that it's the melodies that are the strongest aces these Norwegians hold. These extremely beautiful melody lines work in a way that makes you wonder if you aren't perhaps in a dreaming state. I would say that Attergangar is a quite gloomy creation with the classical injections of melody based black metal contaminated with some Grieg/classical influences and as the final touch of venom there is loads of heavy metal riffing going on in the background. The vocals work really fine, I think. There is good variety between the darker screams from Thomas S. Ovestedal and the clean words from Gaute Refsnes, who also handles the keyboard.

It's difficult to come up with some really good references to Cor Scorpii. I don't think that this is meant as a new Windir, since Cor Scorpii seem to be reaching out for more metal than folk music for inspiration. I use to be quite anti-enthusiastic to this genre within the genre, so to speak. But I must say that I have given in a bit, mainly because the great composing that feeds the ones hungry for black metal in the little elder way. We aren't talking Arcturus or Dimmu Borgir here, this is more like the earlier era of Emperor and Satyricon with cool heavy metal arrangements.

The production is ok, but sometimes the sound tends to be a bit light and thin in order to fill up this costume. All in all, a very ok debut that will please many fans that mourned the split up of Windir.
 

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