With “Swampires”
five piece band Potergeist from
Athens/Greece offer their 4th
release. Their debut album “Southwards” (2007) already indicated the direction
the band is heading and with each release following (a self-titled EP 2008 and
the full length album “Muddy Mermaids” 2010) they carved their own path to
Heavy Southern Rock. On the road sign they wrote “Swamp Metal” and their latest
station so far now (Sept. 2013) is “Swampires”
The album comprises eight songs, each between 4 and 6
minutes in length, plus a short intro and outro.
The first song “Swampires” doesn’t only set the mood
of the album, but represents the basic style, it shows the naked core if the
music, which is indeed a blues infused southern rock. This is what all the
songs have in common, this and that they are all tight and carefully written,
with simple and catchy melodies. They differ from each other though, by several
different stylistic elements Potergeist blend
into the songs. So there are songs that have some more of the grungy sounds,
others are focused on the sludge or groove metal elements.
Six of the eight songs are of powerful straight
forward driving energy, two of them are of a more quiet and slowed down pace.
Unfortunately they both are placed in the middle of the album and break the
flow of it, so the remaining three songs have quite a rough ride to get it
going again.
But anyway, what we have here are eight well crafted
catchy songs, vocals with warm but throaty tone that match the southern mood
perfectly. A flawless production serves as the icing on the cake.
Compared to Potergeists
previous work “Swampires” is the most “professional” sounding album, which
will surely help grow their audience. The price for this though is, that on
their path they lost a part of their natural originality that I heard on “Muddy
Mermaids”.
words by Ulla Roschat
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