Vulvagun – Cold Moon Over Babylon

Hmmmmmm. What do we have here? Looks to me like an Aussie metal band with a curious name based partly on girly naughty bits. I’m not sure where they came up with that name, but the album title at least intrigued me enough to check this out. Let’s see what they are about.

The album title “Cold Moon Over Babylon” made me think this might be a black metal band, but the album cover screams power metal. Turns out the album cover was closest to the mark. Though I’m not sure power metal is a spot on call here. The vocals are kind of power metal sounding but the music could go in a more traditional metal direction.

For an unsigned band that I’ve never heard of before I have to say I’m pretty impressed by the quality of both the sound and the songwriting. This does not sound like the debut album from an unsigned band from down under. The production is good, the songs are fully realized complex compositions and as I listen to the album I want to hear more and know what’s next. These guys obviously know what they are doing.

You know what this reminds me of? It just occurred to me that this makes me think of the first Dream Evil album. The vocals don’t sound the same, but they both have this power metal feel that is also just a bit heavier than you usually get from that genre. A lot of power metal to me is fast and melodic but sort of thin sounding in terms of bottom end. These albums have thicker riffs and bottom end.

Anyway, there are riffs and melodic leads aplenty. The vocals are all clean and fairly melodic. The theme and the tone of the album are dark but the vocals keep things from getting too dark. Most of the songs lean towards the longer side between 5-7 minutes, some longer, some shorter.

I think these guys are worth a listen, but they might want to find a name that fits better with the style of music they are playing. I don’t really see a connection between the two. Other than that, I really dig them and hope they will keep making metal.