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Artist: ARTIFACT
Album: The Only Salvation
Year: 2008
From out of the cold and dark landscapes of Norway hails
Artifact, a band formed late 2002. As many other bands,
many line up changes appeared within the first years,
until the line-up stabilized late 2004 in the current
one. Artifact consists of four members, including
bandmembers of Unpure, This Negative Karma, Deathfare
and Sirenia. Artifact already played some major shows in
their native country (supporting Trail of Tears, Theatre
of Tragedy, a.o.) and released a demo EP in 2005. 'The
Only Salvation' is Artifact's official debut full-lenght
album, released on May 9th by Spiralchords Music.
The album kicks off with the title track. It opens with
very heavy musical works, to be followed by more gentle
electronic works and vocal lines. The powerful drumming
and heavy guitars are repeated all over the song, which
gives an interesting effect with the more gentle and
deep vocal lines. 'New Messiah' is a bit more
atmospheric, with wicked guitarwork and deep, diverse
vocal lines. The song switches from sensitive parts to
more powerful chorusses, without losing the original
dark atmosphere. 'Dead Eyes' is again more powerful,
with a great powerful and recogniseable guitar riff and
outstanding drumming. The way the vocal lines stand
their ground in the powerful parts, as well in the
sensitive intermezzo, is essential within the track. The
song also includes a very atmospheric slower
instrumental parts, which fits the song in a great way.
'Weeping For a Suicide' is probably the most gentle
track on the release. It's built on a spine of strong
drumming and a protounding bassline, while added deep
sensitive vocal lines and various, wicked guitars. The
track as well includes some dark and gentle electronic
sampling, which lays inbetween future pop and dark
electro. This track clearly shows a more old school side
of the band. 'Senseless' continues walking that path.
Musically it lays somewhere inbetween Type O Negative
and The Sisters of Mercy, but Artifact manages to add
some parts of their own style to it. It's clearly not a
'senseless' track in my ears. 'Truth Forgotten' opens
with industrial sounds, to be followed by very heavy
guitar- and drumwork. Again, the contrast with the
gentle vocal lines is pretty big, but not in the
slightest way disturbing. The powerful chorusses switch
to more gentle parts with ease. 'One More Shot' is again
more accessable and easy going. It switches from dark
couplets with clean, old school guitarwork to more
modern and outgoing chorusses, on which the guitars are
more distorted. 'Revolution' is a more powerful track
again, without losing the gentle touches. It contains
modern and strong guitarlines, powerful drumming and
recogniseable and diverse vocal lines, all wrapped
within a slightly industrial package. 'Scapegoated &
Demonized' is a more sensitive track again, which
switches from old school slower parts to modern and
powerful outbursts. 'The Machine' contains heavy guitar
lines, gentle electronic sampling and wicked drumming,
which results in a decently built track that has
influences from both the modern and the old school
corner. 'Bled' is already the final track on the release.
It more or less continues walking the path of the
preverious track, but this time with more present
sampling works. A wellfitting end of a great release.
Although this is just a debut album, it's really hard to
find downsides to the release. All the tracks are
decently built, and within each track lays a certain
degree of variation. Artifact manages to combine very
powerful parts (that are close to industrial death
metal) with gentle, old school gothic metal parts (that
sometimes even come close to stuff like Killing Joke!)
with ease, and the amazing deep vocals are spreaded like
a positive plage all over the record. After the MDM
release, Spiralchords comes up with another very very
very interesting album, which makes it a label to keep a
closer eye on in the future. Fans of Malmonde, Limbogott
, Re:Aktor (who does still remember them?) and maybe
even Fear Factory, as well fans of Type O Negative,
Volkmar, Moonspell and maybe even Rammstein - Artifact's
'The Only Salvation' is an essential release for your
collection, which you can buy blindly without the risk
of a dissapointment.
Vote: 96 / 100
Review by: Gerardo |
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01. The Only Salvation
02. New Messiah
03. Dead Eyes
04. Weeping For a
Suicide
05. Senseless
06. Truth Forgotten
07. One More Shot
08. Revolution
09. Scapegoated &
Demonized
10. The Machine
11. Bled |
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