format: LP
year: 1987
country: Spain
label: SNIF
#: LD 12.009
info: Insert w/ lyrics
style: Power Metal, Epic Metal
Side A:
Side B:
Did you know that Spain is actually a part of Europe?? *shock!*
Joke, but it's funny how seldom a Spanish band or album comes up in your head when you think about classic Euro-Metal. CROM on the other hand sound more Dutch, German, Italian or even Greek than any other band I can think of from this country and not in that rugged Accept-manner, but rather like some lost Teutonic/Epic/Power demo act from the latter half of the 80's. Talk about getting everything right: Sword - *check*, runes - *check*, calling themselves Crom - *check*, having words like "glory", "kings", "mirrors", "victory" and "judgement" in the titles - *7x check*, AND... they actually sound the part. At least at first.
Sure, you could accuse the chorus of "Covered By Glory" to be a bit on the amateur, first-song-we-wrote side, but you can tell they want be Epic Swordwaving Powermetal so frickin' bad you just gotta love 'em anyways. There truly is something to be said about Effort, and with the following masterpiece (almost literary!) "Final Warning" they simply rip through 90% of the competition - it's simply a p-e-r-f-e-c-t composition and representative of this genre. All the flaws that I'm about to point out in the coming paragraphs are null and void and next to invisible here and the band sound genuinely unstoppable.
They almost keep up the pace with the great "King Of Kings", though its intricate nature does make the technical roughness
of the lads shine through a bit too clearly here. With "Galadriel", flaw #2 starts to rear its ugly noggin: Luis' vocals ...are merely OK. As in neither good nor bad. Except when he tries to put some emotion into it and the wailing start, then it's almost bad for real, and this does not blend well with such a great, moodfilled tune as this.
The album basically continues in the same way: brilliant song-ideas with beautifully written parts often worthy of the finest of bands like Virgin Steele, Attack, Adramelch, King Diamond or even early Fates Warning. Really, there is not one bad song on the album, but this vocal bit or that rhythmic fluke does take away a fair chunk of the listening experience. How large a chunk is purely a matter of personal taste.
...and here's the final irony: Say that this instead had been that long lost and cultified demo tape that I theorized about above. This is totally the type of recording underground Metal fans would have been begging for a proper vinyl reissue of for decades, and if it would finally have arrived, I really don't see fans and reviewers then lining up to whine about "technical roughness" and merely "ok vocals". Or the fact that "the follow-up was better" for that matter.