Quadrivium - Adversus

Before everything I believe I should make clear that I am not of those who don’t  like bands that their sound has obvious elements taken from other bands.. Nevertheless, I find this a way to find out worthy moments of a sound that you are already familiar with. So, speaking for Quadrivium, especially since the point that clean vocals make their appearance, they reminded me of Arcturus.. Arcturus really had some magical moments! Do Quadrivium add some more of them to this genre? Hmmm, I ‘m not quite sure.. They are not bad for sure, mostly it has to do with what I tend to say pretty frequently, were we in need of another simply good release? There are some bands which MUST be active for music’s sake, and there are thousands of others that should exist in their country, giving live shows there for example, trying to gain the respect of a specific, closed-enough audience.. These guys here are somewhere in the middle, maybe leaning to the negative side, if I ‘d like to play it hard.. At least I could imagine them open for a greater band, they are not bad musicians.. It’s just that for a stand-alone release, well, maybe it can’t stand the pressure, we ‘ve heard things like that in the past.. And there aren’t many signs of evolution, that’s where I think their main problem is..

Another weird thing I noticed was that the CD plays quite low-volumed, at least 6dB lower than the standards are nowadays.. I am certainly not a fan of the flat waveform, I like dynamics to be heard, even if the final result sounds “quieter” than other releases, the thing is that the mastering engineer for “Adversus” chose the flat waveform, just narrower, that’s the weird with this record.. It really sounds weird.. Anyway, in order to conclude this review, “Adversus” is a release which could be easily heard by fans of black metal, speaking of black the way Arcturus chose to play it, don’t even imagine anything old-fashioned! If you find it somewhere and you are of those who like to enrich their collection with stuff that you re not quite sure about them but they make you somehow hope that you ‘ll get something back, give them a chance!