Cardinals Folly - Our Cult Continues

Cardinals Folly

Our Cult Continues

by Marcus Kemp at 25 July 2014, 6:13 PM

Hailing from Helsinki in Finland, CARDINALS FOLLY are a three piece Doom Metal band that formed in 2004 under the name THE COVEN but changed it to their current name in 2007. In that time they have released 2 EP’s, 1 compilation and 2 studio albums with the second one being their newest “Our Cult Continues!” which will be the main focus of this review.

The band have a large number of lyrical influences for their music including History, Horror films, Scandinavian Mythology, Satanism and many more religious influences that they use for writing their music. It does seem like an odd choice when seeking inspiration for something to write about but nevertheless that is how CARDINALS FOLLY work when making music.

I’ve never really been a big fan of Doom Metal as I’ve never really listened to that sub-genre of metal. Metal music may have some lengthy songs but there are some bands who make it enjoyable despite the long length. Others however are making a huge mistake when writing lengthy songs and CARDINALS FOLLY have made that mistake.

Now that would be alright if the songs were interesting and fun to listen to but unfortunately they are not. The problem with them being so lengthy is that they are, there’s no other way of saying this so I’m going to say it. The music is, in another word, boring. So what makes this new album so boring? Well for one thing the first two tracks are not exactly a great way to start off a new album.

The opening track “Chant of Shadows” does not really build up the suspense and the excitement as it is an instrumental and a rather long one at that and then the next one “Morbid Glory” is very dull as there is no real emotion in the music, the mix or indeed the singers vocals which are at times, very quiet and the words are uninterpretable so you cannot hear what is being sung.

You’d think the rest of the album would be better with more exciting material but unfortunately that is not the case. The song writing is very mediocre, the mixing is average, the songs drag on for far too long with the longest track being the closing track “Fallout Ritualist”, the vocals are poor and you cannot hear the words most of the time.

It’s reasons like this why I have never liked Doom Metal and I’m glad my prejudices remain as overall, I am not impressed with this release and it is for that reason I am going to give it a very low score.