Fans of Swedish death/thrash metal were understandably devestated when underappreciated genre heroes The Crown announced their demise. But fear not my fellow metal heads, ex-The Crown guitar mastermind Marko Tervonen has returned with a brand new metal project, Angel Blake! While not exactly a band I would say is in the same vein as the balls out, take no crap, death/thrash metal that was unique to The Crown, Angel Blake is like a breath of fresh air for the Swedish metal scene. Coming from a country that is best known for the dominating melodic death metal scene, some power and progressive metal, and a black metal scene which is starting to get more notice (even though it's actually every bit as important as the Norwegian scene when you consider that it produced Marduk and especially Bathory, but that's a whole other story that has nothing to do with this), Angel Blake boldly choose to go in a completely different direction from all those bands. Dark heavy rock/metal to be exact, not really all that different than the later work of the now disbanded Finns Sentenced. I would even go as far saying that they fill in the void that the Sentenced's breakup left in their fans.

The music on Angel Blake's 2006 self titled debut album is quite heavy but very melodic. There are clearly influences from Sentenced as well as bands like Danzig, with some Celtic melodies thrown in here and there. While I'm not the biggest Danzig or heavy rock fan around, this album eventually grew on me quite a lot after a few listens. The more I listened to it, and the more I opened my mind to the music and the more it reminded me of Sentenced. The sound of the album is pretty familiar, but some twists make it sound fresh and unique. Another thing that stands out to me is how focused and sharp the songwriting is. It's very evident that Marko had planned to write this kind of music for a few years before The Crown even broke up.

The lineup on this album is Marko Tervonen on all instruments and Tony Jelencovich on all vocals.

Tony's vocal style is more rooted along the lines of hard rock, but it fits the music here very nicely. He has a very clear and almost soothing quality to his voice with an excellent range. He also seems to try to fit his vocals into the individual sound of the song, I personally think he does an excellent job at it. I couldn't imagine any other vocalist working on this album. Marko's versatillity on the instrumental work is very impressive. Very few musicians could play guitar, bass and drums all as if it was their main instrument. The drum work is really impressive. While it's not the very fast and overly technical style that I normally prefer, the control that he has with the bass, the skins and the cymbal is really something. The cymbal work is very hypnotic, expecially when the cymbal crashes just come out of nowhere and give the song a whole new dimension. His bass work is very thick and heavy. I mean thick and heavy as in Cronos or Sharlee D'Angelo heavy! In many parts it's almost as if the bass adds in another guitar. I shouldn't even have to desribe how good his guitar work is to any The Crown fans. The way he mixes that very heavy sound with such a strong sense of melody is almost unrivalled. His guitar leads are also top notch. This guy should be getting the kind of credit that fellow Swede Jesper Stromblad gets, who is one of my favorite guitarists in the scene mind you.

Angel Blake's self titled debut is a promising look at a band who will hopefully release more material in the future. This album should really appeal to Sentenced, Anathema, Paradise Lost, Katatonia or dark/ heavy rock fans. The Crown fans might find what to like in this album, but it's quite different than the trademarked death/thrash that they were known for. I would recommend checking out one or two of their songs so you can see what you think of the music. Each song, while sounding unique and different than the others, does offer a glimpse into what you could expect from the album overall. Fans of faster and more aggressive/brutal metal should not give up on this album too quickly since it will grow on you the more you listen to it. Very solid and consistant, as well as sounding pretty different from most of the metal music coming out these days, 9.0 out of 10. Enjoy.