GMR Music
All star band KRUX boosts members like Leif Edling (CANDLEMASS) on bass, Mats Levén (ex YNGWIE MALMSTEEN, FIREWIND) on vocals, and Fredrik Åkesson (OPETH, ex TALISMAN). And of cause Jörgen sandstorm, guitars (ex GRAVE, ex. ENTOMBED), drummer Peter Stjärnvind (ex ENTOMBED) and Carl Westholm, keys , who featured on a.o. CANDLEMASS and ABSTRAKT ALGEBRA albums, are no beginners either. This their first album with a title and a number is described as a feast for everyone into doom, heavy, epic and powerful music. Well, well, impress me!?
The opening title track starts as an elegant CANDLEMASS variation, complete with space-like guitars and keyboards. The slight lack of refrain power prevents it from being a five star opening. The more enigmatic and KRUX unique doom in “The Hades Assembly” may have a haunting melody, but it has far less attraction on me. The atmosphere, the doom, the spaced-out titles, and the cool elegance with which KRUX perform and convince is a surefire winner in 2011. I feared an album like “Dactylis Glomerata” but got an elegant CANDLEMASS variety which boasts influences from a wider variety of bands. The most evident are slower doom, like TROUBLE, who´s guitarist Bruce Franklin performs a solo on “A Place of Crows”. But there is also more than a hint of KING DIAMOND is songs like “Small Deadly Curses” and “The Death Farm”. The 10.40 long “Prince Azaar and the Invisible Pagoda” sounds like material for your worst and most drab nightmare, but it is a witty piece of atmosphere, grooves, movements and variation. Bravo! Bravo is also the all-in all judgement, this is a contender for the best of 2011 list…
Track list
He Who Sleeps Amongst the Stars
The Hades Assembly
Emily Payne (and the Black Maze)
Small Deadly Curses
Prince Azaar and the Invisible Pagoda
The Death Farm
A Place of Crows
www.gmrmusic.se www.myspace.com/kruxdoom
