MORNINGRISE

This album has some strong and some low points for me.Very strong points are the guitar melodies and the atmophere of the songs. Weak point is Mikael Akerfeldt's growling. Death metal has really grown on me in the last couple of years, but Mikael's geowling is far too brutal for this basically melodic and not too fast paced music. His clean vocals are far from his performance on latter day albums, and they are actually very rarely used on Morningrise. The opening track summarizes quite well this album, melodic metal riffs, beautiful acoustic parts, a well-written 13 minute mini epic. Black Rose Immortal features some brilliant moments, but some irritating guitar sounds(almost tecno like sometimes), too, and I think there are better epic tracks in the realm of progressive metal. The production basically is quite good, for an underground metal band in the '90s, but it would not help much if the songs were awful. Altogether this is a solid, enjoyable album, but in the light of Still Life or Blackwater Park can be viewed only as non essential, even if is actually a good album.