Raven Black Night – Barbarian Winter

Band: Raven Black Night
Album: Barbarian Winter
Record Label: Metal Blade Records
Release Date: 19th February 2013
Reviewed By: Mark

Here we have “Barbarian Winter” released by ‘Raven Black Night’ and is their first release on Metal Blade. Now I have never heard of Raven Black Night and the internet doesn’t throw up to much on them, however they are an Australian Doom/Heavy Metal band and have been going since 1999 and this is their second release. That is pretty much all the information I could gather before I put this album on, apart from the fact it had a cool old school metal cover!!!

“Barbarian Winter” has a traditional Doom feel to it with a lot of early Heavy Metal and N.W.O.B.H.M. added to their sound. The songs that make up “Barbarian Winter” vary from slow Doom pieces to mid-tempo galloping heavy metal/rock. The guitars and vocals are the stand outs on this album with the guitars being everything from heavy and slow to a great Rock riff and the solos are N.W.O.B.H.M style esq but given a coating of doom to them. The vocalist has a great 70’s style to his quality and has amazing technique and can wail, scream, sing or growl the lyrics at you, although the majority of them are clean vocals.

They also cover Black Sabbath “Changes” which is also one of the weak tracks on the album in my opinion as it is to much like the original, although the vocalist sounds more like good old Bruce Dickinson instead of Ozzy (which is a good thing). Some people would say Raven Black Night sound like Black Sabbath however I think they are more Witchfinder General, Candlemass (early stuff), Pentagram, Dio etc. However that could be because in my opinion Black Sabbath are overly rated!!! (let the hate mail begin).

The album gets better as it goes along and the stand out tracks (for me anyway) are “Lips of Desire”, “Angel With a Broken Wing” or “Barbarian Winter”, I must confess upon first listen I thought the album was alright and nothing great or bad. However I have been listening to this album more and more and its managed to get under my skin and has majorly grown on me and is a great album for Raven Black Night to introduce themselves to a wider market.

The production isn’t overly the best, but Raven Black Night show that they are great musicians and write and play some great songs. I hope they get the recognition they deserve as they are a great band and hopefully Metal Blade will push them to a wider audience. Hopefully we wont have to wait 9 years between records and I can only think they will get better with each release. Definitely a release for any fans of Doom, Traditional Heavy metal or N.W.O.B.H.M.

SCORE – 7/10