Hailing from the country of Jordan are the quintet
Bilocate. Their music
encompasses the more melodic side of dark music, while still having enough
balls to hold their own against most doom, black or death metal bands. “Dysphoria”
surprised and impressed me, mostly because Jordan isn’t seen as a
big metal band area. The combination of metallic traits Bilocate uses most
of the time keeps their music fresh and vibrant. Sure this might make you
think of bands like Dimmu Borgir, Anathema, Paradise Lost, Katatonia, Pyogenesis,
Emperor, Opeth, Tiamat, and Cynic, but how can that be a bad trait? It can’t,
so that’s why you should check these guys out. They are considered
a doom/melodic death metal band, which makes since, but their music must
have some blackened parts of their music as well. Soaring melodic metal
riffing contrast the fast black metal parts properly, creating some nice
contrast. There is a lot of passion in their music as well. The leads and
solos possess this a good amount. Song length should separate these metalheads
from most bands, and they do have one achievement worthy to mention that
should give them some added attention. “Dysphoria” contains
the longest song ever created by an Arab metal band — "A Desire
to Leave.” It’s quite an adventure for nearly twently minutes!
The song “Passage” is a nice acoustic piece that will give you
a little Anathema vibe, I enjoyed this quite a bit. Another track I dug
was “2nd War in Heaven,” at times reminded me of older Dimmu
Borgir, say Stormblast-era. It’s probably the riffing style combined
with the keyboards. They also use this technique in other parts of songs.
There are eight total tracks on this CD, an intro and seven songs. Two of
which are over ten minutes apiece. They help push this album to an hour
in length. Production is not crystal clear, but it’s ok. If they had
this cleaned up a little, these tracks would have had a little more power.
Besides that, with a little more writing maturity and creation, these guys
wont only have people’s heads bobbing to their music, but they will
be spinning like in the movie “The Exorcist.”
Rating: 74
Reviewed By: Jeffrey D. Adkins |
