Trollheart

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When searching through my vast (vast!) collection for something new to review, something I've not heard before, something, in short, to make the next “Unwritten” slot, I came across this and thought, hey why not? I've already featured two tracks from Cain's Dinasty in Random Track of the Day, and liked what I heard. Besides, any album whose closing track is titled “**** you forever” has to be worth a listen! So, step forward, guys...

Madmen, witches and vampires --- Cain's Dinasty --- 2010 (RedRivet)
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Almost making it a candidate for “Meanwhile, back in the real world”, Cain's Dinasty's second album was released December 30 2010, still making it very current. The band hail from Spain, a country previously known among the heavy metal fraternity mostly for Baron Rojo, but these guys sing in English, which is a help, no matter what way you look at it. They do offend the spelling Nazi in me though: why they couldn't have called themselves Cain's Dynasty (or Destiny, if that's what it's meant to be) I don't know, but it's a minor quibble so let's not blow it out of proportion. Makes 'em hard to search on the internet, though!

Cain's Dinasty seem to have gone through something of a lineup change recently, but as far as I can gather, at least three of the five were born in Alicante, so perhaps this is a case of childhood/school friends getting together to form a band? Though they seem a little old for that, but who knows? Maybe they've been together under different band names. Either way, it seems these guys have always been a quintet, and are based around the tried-and-trusted format of singer/guitar/guitar/drums and bass. And away we go!

It's power/speed metal right from the off, mad steamhammer drums with finger-frying guitar on opener “Breaking the bloodlines”. It's quite long for a speed or even power metal track, just over seven minutes, and the longest track on the album at that. Vocalist Ruben Picazo alternates between a powerful, throaty roar to deep growls (or maybe someone else is taking that part of the vocal?) but seems very competent: you can certainly make out what he's singing. The band seem to have something of an obsession with vampires and other creatures of the night --- you'd never know it from the title of the album! --- and a lot of the tracks seem to reflect that in the lyrics as well as the title. Here, we have ”Crying for the wasted blood/ The weak man kills the strong one/ Breaking the blood lines /Devil May Cry.” Great guitar solo from Pablo Rizo, who is obviously strongly influenced by Kirk Hammet and Dave Mustaine, but who is also an accomplished classical guitarist.

“After death still you play with me” --- a dodgy title if ever there was one! However, the song seems to be based on the fact that even in death there is no release, though a common problem with bands for whom English is not their native or first language surfaces here, in some pretty incomprehensible lines: ”Open my mind, open her grave/ She excused my life, But broke all my hopes” but in fairness the rest of the lyric is quite well written. However this is power metal, and we're less concerned with the lyrics than we are with the music, and there's little doubt that's pretty damn good. Nothing extraordinary, but definitely up there with the better bands of this ilk.

I'm getting the vague feeling that this may be a concept album, as the next track, “Waiting for death”, has some sort of introductory narration or soliloquy in a language I don't recognise, and I don't think it's Spanish. There's the name of a character (Lord Strigoi), and there's a definite idea of some sort of story going on here, but I can only guess from the lyric how that fits together across the album. At any rate, the song is another fast power rocker, but there are definitely some keyboards in there, as they were in the background to the introduction to this track, though no player is credited. Apparently the main figure, the hero I guess, is on a quest for his soul, which seems to have led him to Hell. Interesting, if a little confusing.

Quite dramatic, the music here, with some excellent guitar solos, something of a cut above the norm, here at least. “Devil may cry” seems to be about the Fallen One (hard to follow the story, if there is one) and is a fast, powerful rocker-on-rails-of-thunder, that everpresent galloping, pounding drumbeat driving the rhythm like some infernal engine, courtesy of David Sabater. More great guitar solos, and the double vocal lending that sort of “background death grunt” prevalent in a lot of this music. One criticism I would level at Picazo though is that it's hard to make out the lyrics he's singing, though he's quite clear when there's a break in the instrumentation, as in this song, so perhaps it's the overexuberance of the players, drowning him out?

“Clarimonda” is a slower cruncher, with definite elements of Metallica, the tragic tale of a man who sees his lover turned to the Darkness, and has to kill her for good. ”After bearing the pain of burying her beauty/ I saw her back to life turned into a vampire/ And blinded by ambition of breaking her damnation/I returned to the graveyard to finish with her/ I Scattered blessed water on her body/And all her beauty turned into ashes.” There are a lot of choral vocals (whether on synth or an actual choir I don't know, though I'd suspect the former) and the melody has tinges of Thin Lizzy in the guitar parts. The song speeds up near the end, as the awful deed has to be performed, I would assume. Hmm, nice bit of Maidenesque guitar in there too!

Vampires figure again in the next track, “My last sunrise”, but this time the singer is the creature of darkness, and is about to give his life, or unlife, as he faces the sun, which is obviously true death for any vampire. It opens with sorrowful, dramatic synth, then powers right up into another fast headshaker, as Picazo sings ”Rising from the East bringing life/ To a new day (the last for me)/ Feeling the heat of light /With tears in my eyes.” Given the subject matter, I think this would have worked better as a slower song, maybe some lonely piano, a crying violin... maybe Cain's Dinasty don't do that sort of thing, I don't know, but in a way it's a pity that at its heart “My last sunrise” is just another fast power-metal-rocker, when it could have been so much more. It is, at any rate, the first of the tracks on the albums that fades!

We've had the madmen (“Waiting for death”, “Breaking the bloodlines”) and the vampires (both the last tracks), now we have the witch, as “Miss Terror” gets going, and it's pretty clear that all the imagery used in Cain's Dinasty's lyrics is dark, centred around death and doom, blood and horror. No love songs then, and no “We're the toughest/fastest/loudest/delete as appropriate” songs. I guess this is what they call Black Metal then? It's a faster track than previous, if that's possible, and really rockets along, but there's nothing there to really mark it out as all that different from the rest of the songs on the album. Soon forgotten, unfortunately.

“Bring me your blood” is more of the same: fast, powerful, anthemic. I'd say this goes down well onstage. Vocals a good bit clearer here, you can make out what's going on. Well, you can hear the lyric: it's kind of hard to figure out what these guys are on, assuming they write their own stuff! All very dark and gothic. This, at any rate, is where Pablo Rizo briefly shows off his considerable skill on the classical guitar, and this carries through into penultimate track “A void in my heart”, with more effective keys, and the first slow track, indeed the first, and I would venture only, ballad. It's handled very well, with tasteful guitar, nice emotive keys and a very restrained vocal from Picazo. Nice to hear him rein it in for once. See, you can do it if you try!

No such restraint, as you would expect, for the closer, the gloriously named “**** you forever”. It's another heads-down, blood-boiling, teeth-chattering speedfest, but then, that's only really appropriate with this band as I've come to know them through this album, and in a weird way it would have been wrong to have finished on something like the previous track. There's no pretensions here, just out-and-out metal, with every sinew straining as the band charge headlong towards the finish line.

I have a sort of sneaking admiration for Cain's Dinasty, perhaps born of their very deep and intricate, if sometimes obscure lyrics, or maybe because they're Spaniards who do very well singing in English and seem to be building up quite a following. Or maybe it's just because they're honest. Here we are, they say, we're Cain's Dinasty. We play metal. It's loud. It's fast. It's hard. And if you don't like it then **** you! They don't try to be what they're not, they don't aspire to some level they can never hope to attain, and most of all, they're dedicated to their music. It's not really my kind of metal: I prefer to be able to make out the lyrics and speed is not really my thing. But for what they do, these five guys from Alicante do it exceedingly well.

Oh, and that concept? Your guess is as good as mine. Answers on a postcard...

TRACKLISTING

1. Breaking the bloodlines
2. After death still you play with me
3. Waiting for death
4. Devil may cry
5. Clarimonda
6. My last sunrise
7. Miss Terror
8. Bring me your blood
9. A void in my heart
10. **** you forever

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