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Hailing from Dublin, Ireland, Celtachor perceive themselves as part of the restricted Celtic Metal genre but to me they’re more like a Black Metal band that occasionally uses acoustic folk instruments such as the flute. That might serve as a basic description of the music but in reality there’s more stuff being thrown into the cauldron of Celtachor. Ok, I did mention Black Metal but there are no blastbeats and the tempo is more mid to slow. In fact guitars are downtuned giving the music a Doomy vibe and I quite liked that. As regards the vocals, Celtachor’s Stephen Roche strongly reminded me of Skyclad’s Martin Walkyier (funny how all mention of Folk and Metal end up with a reference to Skyclad!). More obvious references would be Mael Mórdha and of course Cruachan but there are also subtle hints of Iron Maiden – as in ‘A Warning To Balor’. Therefore Celtachor seems to have a disparate array of influences but the band’s style still manages to stand confidently on its own two legs. However…..the tracks all need some tidying up. There are a number of instances when the band seems to have problems in sounding tight. For example, the flute intro to ‘In The Halls Of Nuada’ sounds a tad too fast in context with the rest of the song. Or if you listen carefully at the end of ‘A Warning To Balor’ there are faint traces of the band members speaking once the track has just ended. But these are not things that cannot be sorted out, plus the band more than compensates for any possible shortcoming by their emotionally charged songwriting skills. In this context I’d like to single out the excellent ‘The Wavesweeper’ with its ultra-heavy and Doomy riffs. Speaking of specific tracks, I even enjoyed the instrumental and atmospheric opening track – a sort of calm before the storm. Very promising stuff. A band to watch out for. | ||||||||||||||||||
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