Vinyl Spotlight - Caladan Brood - Echoes of Battle

by Elijah Chamberlain

Album Artwork from Caladan Brood

Along my journey into the wonderful world of black metal, I stumbled into the genre of epic black metal via the band Summoning. I picked up Old Mornings Dawn at HMV when it was still HMV, and gave it a blind listen. Suffice to say I was blown away at the incorporation of synths and programmed drums, which is not something I would have expected to enjoy. In typical black metal fashion, Shield Anvil's vocals are harsh and shrieking, but have a certain hollowness to them that I can't really explain any other way. I continued down the rabbit hole and discovered Caladan Brood on YouTube. Not even five minutes into the album and I was hooked.

The first track, City of Azure Fire starts off with a melodic harp intro, before throwing you into the rest of the album with ripping guitar riffs and Shield Anvil's shrill vocals piercing through the instrumentation. Each track takes you on a journey to Steven Erikson's world of Malazan: Book of the Fallen, a book series I highly recommend. The lyrical content is based off these books and the music really shows the source material. Wild Autumn Wind, the third track, is an absolute masterpiece in my opinion. The guitars drive the song throughout, and once again, Shield Anvil's vocals pierce through the mix to give the feeling of what seems like a lost and forlorn soul crying out, while choir vocals switch out occasionally to give even more emotional drive to the track. The riffs on this track are stellar but simple, especially in the segments between vocals. It's truly an emotional track overall and one of my personal favourites from the album. To Walk the Ashes of Dead Empires, the track following, is definitely less guitar driven, and draws heavily on the band's use of synths, and not just in the drumming. It throws in a few other fantasy-inducing instruments like pan flutes and even adds a rain effect around the mid-point of the song. I hate to pick favourites out of this album, given I feel it's basically a perfect album, but this track and Wild Autumn Wind definitely make the album for me, with the addition of the final track, Book of the Fallen. The track puts the image of an army marching home after long years at war, but closes with a triumphant war chant sung in clean vocals that are sprinkled throughout the album. I cannot help but belt out any time it plays, it's just such a badass way to end the album, putting a proverbial cherry on top of the already mind-blowing experience.

The album's artwork is done by a late painter named Albert Bierstadt, whose work is absolutely stunning. I was surprised to learn that he did the majority of his painting in the United states, while the cover art looks like it should be pulled from a fantasy novel.

The entire album is near-perfection, and at the time that I listened to it, it had gone out of press, until not a year ago when I spotted it on Art of Propaganda Records' online store. I got the white edition, but for the rest of my life I will pine over the diehard edition I keep seeing in record collector's YouTube videos. Regardless of this fact, I'm glad I have the white edition, as it's one of the few white records I have in my collection. This album is in my top ten favourite albums of all time, and for good reason. I command that any of you reading should check it out.