BRIMSTONE – Carving A Crimson Career

Brimstone addresses the Metal world with Carving A Crimson Career. That’s a great line, a great name for an album and also a good one for a song but why didn’t they go for it? They should have been carved with other great Metal bands and these guys weren’t far from reaching the top with this album. It is positive to say that the Swedes did a good job here but sadly, no one has heard from them since. So where is the career?

Coming out from Gothenburg in 1994, the band were a five piece playing one of the first unique features of Heavy / Power / Speed Metal with harsh, or you can say Black / Death Metal, vocals. The amazing thing is that their style is somewhat different from Children Of Bodom, Norther and other melodic harsh vocals acts. In 1994 the name Brimstone was still under the water, and the first demos by the band, until 1998 when they were released under their previous name Havoc.

When the band recorded their first album,Carving A Crimson Career, it was already under the Brimstone banner. At first, TPL Records released the album and then in 1999, it was re-released by Nuclear Blast Records… that was a huge step for the guys. Brimstone can be considered a project, maybe because the band is not out of the way yet, as they said they are still on hold.

When the album was recorded, only three of the five played a part in it. The vocalist, Jan-Erik Persson, the sole survivor of the band, the Warfare Incorporated guitarist, Daniel Grahn, that also handled the bass work and Ola Larsson that handled the drums. Although they were only three dudes working, they made a hell of a job on producing. The sound is like a sharpened blade, accurate and clean that both goes for the guitars and drums. The sound’s characteristics much resemble two other Swedish Power Metal acts, Hammerfall and the late Storyteller. The vocals were a choice to give the music more strength although when thinking about it Hammerfall’s Cans did a great job on the vocals to charge it up, but Persson probably wanted to give a more brutal approach. However, the deathly vocals are not that melodic, yet he makes it work quite well with tons of reverb.

While trying to make something special of their own they aimed their music and lyrics to reach the strong point of 80’s and 90’s Heavy / Power Metal. They pushed both sub-genres to their limits to give them a much stronger edge and with that edge came the magnificent melodies and the fast pace solos. The result is a heavy and sweeping release that will not tire.

What the band failed to do is create less banal riffs and maybe a bit more solos that are complex. Nevertheless, some will say that they are trying to revive lost efforts forgotten. Although there are banal riffs like in “Heavy Metal Kid” and “Tunes Of Thunder” and there aren’t too many solos, Brimstone are great performers and with their great sound and spirit these riffs are still magic and contain some great lead guitar breaks like in “Carving A Crimson Career” and the tap breaker, “Breaking The Waves”. This album is purely in the traditional way of Metal but with a small juice up that is in the vocal’s section.

Lyrically, one can truly hear how Heavy Metal inspired these guys with anthems of praise like in “Heavy Metal Kid”. The creation of a life effort with the self-titled song and the reminder of an endless discussion about one of the most known lyrical themes in Metal which is the Night in the song, “Welcome The Night”. Also Brimstone presents themselves as an anti-Christian group and they show it in “Pagan Sons” which has a strong element of the ancient gods of the Normans. “King Of My Kind” and “Tunes Of Thunder” are war songs that won’t shame Hammerfall.

Carving A Crimson Career came to draw almost every Metalhead. The addition of the growling vocal line was meant to give the Death / Black Metallers something to chew on. For the lovers of Siebenburgen and Ensiferum, this one is also for you. Brimstone are charged with some awesome tracks that a true Metaller will put in his/her collection. “Breaking The Waves” is the first shot that cracks with an awesome rhythm and lead guitar stretch. “Carving A Crimson Career” is the best of the album with an intro that reminds of Dissection’s “Where Dead Angels Lie” and marching on with a fast paced melodic thunder with a classic solo. The Heavy Metal tunes are “Pagan Sons” , the slow paced “Heavy Metal Kid” and the 80’s “Welcome The Night”.

Maybe Brimstone are not that original but they did try to create something that will be recalled as their own effort. They almost did it perfectly. The big question is where are they? And will they come back to hit the Metal world with another great release? As far as this album is concerned, the Polish Metal Mind label will be re-releasing the album at some future date.