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English Translation

Listening to Boneyard's debut album prompts me to reflect. First of all, I'm not sure who exactly is this music for? Of course, the most important thing is the vision and free will of composers, but an attempt to properly present the products of their imagination gives the audience a chance to reach their message at all. In this particular case, Pamtera and her friends started a few years ago playing various covers of classically heavy metal icons. Their original material refers to this type of patterns, but seems incomparably more accessible to the general audience. The cover already tempts with bright red, and the witch sitting on the throne - although surrounded by skulls and wearing Lemmy's hat - is more of a candidate for Gargamel's wife than a medieval witch. Sasetka would probably come up with a cool phrase on this occasion, but I don't remember its slogans anymore, because in my school days I spent more time with TSA hits than with Smurfs. I sincerely believed that "Proceder" defines heavy metal of the 21st century. I considered it a gross factual error when someone labeled this album as "ordinary rock". Today I come back to this issue because Boneyard "Oathbreaker" sounds to me like a collection of "usually rock" compositions, although profiled for heavy metal. The tracks are not too twisted, on the contrary - there is an order relatively rare in contemporary metal. Virtually all themes are brought to the fore as in mainstream rock. Pamtery's voice has more joy and warmth than a burr. The drums definitely set the pace and the guitars can be sharp especially in solo parts, but it's not about demonstrating any majestic power here. Certainly many contemporary blues rock productions have a similar intensity of guitar groove as here (eg "Born Again" rocks that hey). "Oathbreaker" gives me pleasure, does not make me rebel, and the only manifestation of my departure from "ordinary" are allusions to gambling in lyrics (didn't Elvis Presley sing about the same in "Viva Las Vegas"?). I appreciate how much these songs are carrying and hit (why is "Catch Me If You Can" at the end of the album?), But it's not necessarily something we want to hear when we feel like typical, underground heavy metal. Just as Rage uncompromisingly takes the risk of being too melodic for thrash metalheads and too overwhelming for heavy metalers, Boneyard shows artistic courage. I suspect they feel connected to the metal community, but want to play stylistically something with one foot in the mainstream. By the way, I will notice that another Canadian, James Delbridge, currently rushing to run on the stage, could significantly make his fledgling Lycanthro much more attractive if he decided to go in a similar direction with the new line-up (and the potential for this is enormous, since from birth he is eager to perform in front of a larger audience). In Poland, the art of combining heavy metal with accessible rock is currently performed, among others, by Access Denied, Memocrasher and Night Lover. Maybe Boneyard should be addressed to the fans of these three teams in the first place? (4/6)