Crimson Cult – Tales of Doom CD review

With an album title like Tales of Doom and a band name that has the word “cult” in it, you would expect Crimson Cult to be a dark, depressive doom metal band. How wrong are you? In fact, Crimson Cult is a straight up heavy metal band from Salzburg, Austria who is signed to the mighty Pure Steel Records. With a vocalist whose piercing cry could blow your eardrums on contact, a tight rhythm section and ten all killer, no filler songs on the table, Crimson Cult show just how hard a small Austrian band can bring the metal thunder!

Tales of Doom is a really diverse album. There are some groovy parts, some extremely heavy parts, some dark parts and some melodic parts. It’s a really varied album and no matter what song you listen to, no matter whether it is the cantering, Maiden like bounce of ‘Institution Christ’ or the up and arms anthem that is ‘The Long Way Home’, it is clear that Crimson Cult have written this album with the idea that they want it to appeal to as many people as possible. Crimson Cult is the ultimate example of a killer metal band and Tales of Doom is the CD that will get the recognition they deserve.

This album is full of anthems, and it really sounds so triumphant and regal when tracks like ‘Crimson Empire’, ‘Coshinja’ and ‘The Inquisition’ burst through your speakers. It’s always good fun to sing along to a chorus of a song that builds and builds and finally when it reaches the penultimate bar, everything seems to explode. Crimson Cult are masters of doing this and all throughout Tales of Doom there are key moments that make you want to sing along to your hearts contempt, bang your head and throw the horns.

It’s such a shame that an album this good does not have a catchy artwork cover. Although it symbolises the title and the band’s name, it isn’t interesting and doesn’t stand out in the slightest. If Crimson Cult where to have picked a more suitable album artwork that was more relevant to their sound, than their misleading name, then Tales of Doom would be a much better, well rounded album. It’s not an album that stands out on a shelf and that is Crimson Cult’s downfall with this record.

Crimson Cult may have released the music that will get them noticed further afield than Austria, but it’s the packaging and concept that let’s this album down. If Crimson Cult would have concentrated more on this, then we could have had on our hands one of the greatest traditional metal CD’s from an underground band in the past ten years! [8/10]