Alongside Enslaved and Abbath’s rock-ish project “I”, Svölk reminds the world that there’s much more to Norway’s music scene than the corner that many black metal bands have (corpse) painted themselves into.

Svölk’s debut full length kicks off with a down-home sounding jam, which quickly turns into an old-school doom metal dirge Hell-bent on rocking and rolling. Imagine the more straightforward parts of Mastodon mixed with the more upbeat parts of Down, dominated by hard rock influenced vocals. The singer sounds like a strange combination of James Hetfield and the dude from Ram Jam (woah Black Betty!).

The first track is really badass once you get over the surprise. Everything works; the quirky beginning is followed by a memorable verse-chorus structure that segues into a powerful melodic breakdown. If every song on the album were of this caliber, the rating on this review would be around the 4.5 mark.

The problem is, once track 2 starts, gone is the doom. The style switches into something reminiscent of Megadeth circa Killing Is My Business overlaid with vocals sounding like they were cut off a Killers track. Not to rag on The Killers, they’re a good band in their own right, but these styles don’t mesh at all.

The rest of the album goes back and forth between these modes and is not convincing. There are no more quirks like on the first song, and the clear indecision between whether Svölk wants to play blues-filled doom metal or metalized 80’s club rock is tangible. The second best track is “End Of Days”, where the band goes back to the slow tempos and groovy riffs that best suit their tone and their vocalist.

This band has great potential and hopefully will get their vision on track. It’s hard to recommend purchasing the album, but hitting up “52″ (the first track) as an mp3 download is a sure bet as well as a direct message to the band about what part of their sound is working.

2.5/5