Cover Art: So this band is called Whispered and the title of their album is called Shogunate Macabre. Ok. This may be fine if you are a Japanese band, but thing is they aren’t; I think they are American, or at least live in America but are a bunch of Europeans? whatever. Anyways, I get it guys, you like Japanese culture and samurais and shit, but you don’t really have to put some demon samurai ruining some shit on the cover, so bait. Well at least the art itself is pretty good.

Album Review: Imagine some samurai and army on a battlefield, yea, depending on what they are doing, either fighting, resting, doing some magical shit or vowing for revenge or honor, there’s probably a song on the album that goes well with that epic scene. The style of metal is typical melodic death with a bit of symphonic added, which I like but they also put a twist on things using traditional Japanese instruments and vocal choir in their songs which makes it sound kinda exotic and old-timely. The guitar work and overall tempo of songs is good but is a bit variable, sometimes going really fast almost dragonforce level, then all of a sudden slowing to a crawl to squeeze in some biwa or jazzy oriental sounding solo. It’s been done before by others to great effect but I think they just overuse it in this one.

Vocals are ok, the death growls are nothing to get excited about nor is the choir but works well for the kind of music they want to make. Since this is the Japanese edition of the album, they have 2 bonus songs; one is a cover to an oldschool animal anime, Ginga (Nagareboshi Gin) which sounds pretty badass compared to the original and a cover of the Final Fantasy VII battle music, which is pretty good as well.

This album is alright, a few songs are really good while the others are just ok. It helps that their 2 bonus songs are very good too.

Score: 7/10

DL: http://uploaded.net/file/qfbyqf8j