A Vow of Vengeance is the debut full length album by the Metal band Cult of the Fox. Funny thing is that although I can’t find too much information about them online, there are contradictory information of the bands origin. They are on the Metal Archives of course, where it’s said that the band originates from SKåne in Sweden. Yet, when I go to Discogs, there’s information that this is a German band. Confusing. But when I have all that information I think I can tell that the accent by the lead vocalist is in fact Swedish.
Not by much though. At least nothing I really pay any attention to. Accents by vocalists is seldom an issue for me. What’s usually is a n issue though, is that I don’t like the voice of the vocalist. It has little to do with the their singing capacities. It’s more the voice itself, or if it’s compatible with the music,
In this case though. I think that Magnus Hultman (vocals) sounds exactly as genuine as he want to sound. You could argue that if it’s too perfect and too well produced some of the authenticity goes lost. Well, A Vow of Vengeance is certainly not perfect and I think that brings a genuine feeling of the band doing what they really want to do. This is not sold out to commercialism.
But do I like A Vow of Vengeance? Well, the melodies are nothing special to me. There are no really memorable riffs. It sounds harsh and it sounds like the band themselves mixed and produced the album. Like a demo if you like. Music Wise it’s somewhere between Heavy Metal and traditional Hardrock. If it were released in the mid 80’s it would have meed Metal for sure. But as the music climate have changed a bit since then I would place it a bit closer to the Hardrock realm.
But you have to remember that when you listen to early Black Sabbath today, what you hear can often be described as twelve bar blues patterns. Time takes its toll on the music scene and even if the music itself still embodies the same qualities, our experiences color our conception if it. Meaning that when you hear something hard and heavy for the first time you tend to overcompensate you experiences of it.
A Vow of Vengeance is an ok album I guess, but nothing more, and nothing less.
