Age Of Pandora is the second offering from German metallers Nothgard and it’s an adventurous piece that is chock-full of exciting and engaging tracks that are simply asking for you to bang your head and tap your foot along to.
‘Epic’ is perhaps a good starting point to describe this album; featuring massive and daring instrumention topped off rather well with great meaty vocals, everything is in place for Age Of Pandora to be an album to remember.
One particular highlight of the album is Black Witch Venture, which can only really be described as a mini masterpiece. Starting off rather slowly and subdued, almost lulling the listener into a false sense of security, things build up and up until you’re faced with this wonderfully heavy yet stunningly melodic piece that features some headbangingly brilliant instrumental sections, stunning guitar-work and even some rather intriguing whispered vocals to round the track up.
There’s only one (slightly pedantic) problem with the album and that’s that at times, there isn’t much differentiating between some of the songs. They’re all written well and the band’s talent really shines though, but there isn’t a huge amount of variation as the tracks progress, with most of them largely following the same sort of format. It’s a good format for sure, but it’s like Nothgard have played things a little too safe at times.
However all in all, Age Of Pandora is a most excellent release and one album that certainly won’t be leaving our sound system for a while to come! Now bring on the tour with TrollfesT and Equilibrium!
8/10
