Review Summary: Those damn Danish folks always pumping out the best melodic black metal.
Fairytale Abuse is a relatively unknown band in the sputnik ranks, well the basically relatively unknown anywhere as far as I know. There aren’t really many facts about the band that I can tell you due to the fact that I can’t find anything about this band other than this cd and The Spirit Tower.
Now when I call Fairytale abuse melodic black I’m not just throwing around that word just because of their symphonic moments, every aspect of the music from the band’s music is very melodic. The guitar work can be frantic but it maintains its melody throughout the whole album. There are quite a few symphonic moments on this record; basically this can be described as Cradle of Filth minus the gay.
Most of the vocals on the record are a wretched scream with occasional gutturals being thrown in here and there. The shrieks are very sinister and the gutturals are very overpowering, I sense that the person growling has a lot of anger issues, because man he can burp out some very mean lows. In other words there is a lot of fury in the vocal department and it is made very clear that this is not falsely created fury this is real and crushing. This is definitely a good band to start with if you’re looking into black metal, it’s probably not the best representation of the genre but it gives you an idea of what it’s like in an easily digestible way.
The keyboardist adds some great melodies to the already melodic orgy that is Fairytale Abuse, at points they create a very gloomy depressing atmosphere, and at others they almost sound really intense and uplifting. The growls are used a lot more on this record than they were on the previous full-length “The Spirit Tower”. There is quite a bit of vocal layering on this due to the dual vocal assault, when executed properly this can sound very powerful, most of the layered sections on this album are well thought out and sound great.
The lyrics on the album are good, not your typical satanic black metal lyrics. Most of the lyrics on this record are about epic battles and wars, still kind of typical, but there are also some very dark themed songs about death and deception. The best use of the symphonics is definitely in the song “At the Gates of Thorn” The symphonics alone on the song would be good enough for an instrumental track practically everything else is just a bonus. This record is packed full of epic songwriting and instrumentation but overall “Vivid the Blood Ill-Natured” takes the cake for most epic, and it packs a serious punch in the process. While the riffs on the album are entertaining they don’t stray too far away from the norm, though they do change pace quite a bit, for example the song “When One Bleeds” has a wicked rhythm section that is fairly slow that quickly morphs into some rather fast picking.
So the bottom line is, after years of aimlessly searching the internet for some quality metal, this is one of the few bands I have bumped into that actually hold a great deal of substance and remains consistent. I would even go as far to say that this is melodic black metal perfected, minus the lyrics of course which is really the only thing that is flawed on the album as far as I can see. If you don’t enjoy music that is melodic or are looking for something more towards the brutal side of things this isn’t the album for you. This may be extremely hard to find in the states, as far as I can tell it isn’t available here at all, but if you can find it, hard copy or not check it out, you won’t be disappointed. 5/5
