{"id":829743,"date":"2026-03-16T14:34:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T14:34:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/829743\/"},"modified":"2026-03-16T14:34:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T14:34:14","slug":"ravenspell-obsidian-king-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/829743\/","title":{"rendered":"Ravenspell – Obsidian King Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"When old-school Traditional Heavy Metal looks fondly upon its family tree, it sees that it has birthed a host of sub-genre descendants as numerous as the stars of the sky and the grains of sand on the seashore. And like most ancestors, it looks out upon its progeny with both pride and revulsion. For instance, it seriously doubts that \u201cprogressive dissonant blackened death metal\u201d can actually be related to it and eyes that genre\u2019s mail\/milk person with suspicion. But then it sees the New Wave of Traditional Heavy Metal and smiles at the straightlaced apple that didn\u2019t fall too far from the proverbial tree. But even then, the Old Timer sees two different shades of its mini-me, one that incorporates all the bells and whistles of today\u2019s newfangled production values, and one that wears the thrift shop aesthetic of olden days. I really dig bands that can pull off the latter effectively, bands like Century<\/a><\/strong>, Lord Mountain<\/a><\/strong>, and the gold standard of my recent memory, Legendry<\/a><\/strong>. <\/p>\n

Quebec\u2019s Ravenspell<\/strong> is hoping to join that mighty new-olde company with their debut full-length effort, Obsidian King. Sample the embedded single and album opener \u201cGod the Watcher\u201d, and you\u2019ll hear Ravenspell<\/strong> chain its pocket watch to its three-piece suit as it tries to sound as long in the tooth as possible. The song blasts off like a saint out of hell with some rapid riffing and a siren wail from vocalist Alisander the Seer. Clocking in at under four minutes, it sets a blistering tone for an album that will constantly walk the line between classic and speed metals.<\/p>\n

Obsidian King by Ravenspell<\/a><\/p>\n

Like genre leaders Visigoth<\/strong> and Eternal Champion<\/strong>, these guys channel old granddads of metal Manilla Road<\/strong> and Iron Maiden<\/strong> as they serve up sword and sorcery sermons with sweet earworm choruses. Good luck getting \u201cOnwards We March\u201d or \u201cBook of the Dead\u201d out of your head\u2014the latter earns bonus points for kicking things off with a sample from Army of Darkness. Interspersed throughout the more balanced tracks are sub-three-minute, cocaine-fueled speed racers (\u201cHellstorm\u201d and \u201cBattleaxe Apocalypse\u201d) that hit you and disappear before you even know what happened.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This war wagon nearly made it to the finish line before one of the wheels began to fall off. \u201cAtilla\u201d positions itself to be the Obsidian King\u2019s epic finale, and while it has some cool musical ideas, it ultimately falls flat. Literally. The main vocal lines and backing vocals try to harmonize, but end up clashing in a really unpleasant way. The track also breaks Ravenspell<\/strong>\u2019s winning formula, the one they spent the previous 32 minutes perfecting: classic metal songs at four minutes, speed metal at three. \u201cAtilla\u201d is eight minutes, and in its current form, it just doesn\u2019t work, hun. Production-wise, Obsidian King aims for that old-timey aesthetic of yesteryear, and it mostly hits, despite sounding overly loud to my ears.<\/p>\n

Overall, Ravenspell<\/strong> has done the old geezers of metal proud. Obsidian King sounds like it could have been released in the 80s, and for the most part, it delivers the goods. While it may end with a doozy of a misstep, there is over half an hour of quality music here that should please fans of geriatric metal.<\/p>\n

Rating:<\/strong> 3.0\/5.0
DR:<\/strong> 5 | Format Reviewed:<\/strong> 320 kbps mp3
Label:<\/strong> Fighter Records<\/a>
Websites:<\/strong> ravenspell.bandcamp.com<\/a> | facebook.com\/ravenspellofficial<\/a>
Releases Worldwide:<\/strong> March 12th, 2026<\/p>\n

\n\tGive in to Your Anger:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When old-school Traditional Heavy Metal looks fondly upon its family tree, it sees that it has birthed a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":829744,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3936],"tags":[45789,12933,16282,77,176785,238247,33693,25347,107887,233208,269,238248,238249,6080,6082,78019,16,15,238250],"class_list":["post-829743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-45789","tag-3-0","tag-canadian-metal","tag-entertainment","tag-eternal-champion","tag-fighter-records","tag-heavy-metal","tag-iron-maiden","tag-manilla-road","tag-mar26","tag-music","tag-obsidian-king","tag-ravenspell","tag-review","tag-reviews","tag-speed-metal","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-visigoth"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116239353165718100","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/829743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=829743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/829743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/829744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=829743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=829743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=829743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}