Good Beer & Old Metal
-- Olymp --
15/09/2023
David Hardy
Album genres:
| ■ | traditional metal |
| ■ | heavy metal |
| ■ | Speed metal |
Album artists:
| ■ | Butschi | Guitar, vocals |
| ■ | Armin | Guitar |
| ■ | André | Bass |
| ■ | Dommi | Drums |
Intro
So, who is Olymp? ... It's an old-fashioned German band made up of Sebastian Tölle aka "Butschi" on vocals and guitar, Armin Feigl also on guitar, André Möbius on bass and backing vocals, and finally Dominik Rankl on drums. They hail from Augsburg, near Munich, in the depths of Germany. You know what else came from Munich and the '74-'91 era? Inspector Derrick! ...Suffice to say, they've got the chops to manage to traumatize us ... Here's hoping it's more lively and stirring! ... spoiler alert yes!Well, as I said above, it's all 80s, and they're not hiding it! ... But be warned, I'd say that, unlike others who do "like in the 80s", they do 80s. With its advantages and disadvantages! Be warned!
Verse
1) Hades: chosen for the clip, what do we think of it? ... a slightly long intro, but when you get into it, you're in! ... you can feel the 80s influences of Mottorhead and others.
2)Death and glory, another 50-second intro that's far too long, and we're into the good poum chack ...The vocal part is ... not very interesting, the solo at 2:53 doesn't seem perfect, and the whole thing is pretty repetitive, the end is a long and boring redite, ... have you understood that this isn't my favorite track?3) Icarus, ... far ahead of the previous song, more powerful and more expressive, you get a much greater sense of the band's potential. As it's less flat, it's much more exciting. At 3:57, a little solo that feels good, not Satriani but very correct for what he has to do! At 4:50 it's good too... it introduces the end of the song in a much more interesting way than the previous track.
4) Hero, ... here we agree, here it speaks to me, ... still a rather long intro, and the "stop" at 0:45 a bit useless but otherwise, yes, I agree ... within reason because before 1:46 (start of the vocals) it's a bit stretched by doubling / tripling bars unnecessarily, but the melodies are good and Butschi's voice is top notch for this type of track. The second part and the end are really worth keeping as they are. A good track, despite its length.
5) City of gods, not a fan of the solo at 3:25 I'd have liked André (Bass) to have been more at the front of the mix (you hear him more at the end). I think it would have brought that little roundness that's missing. Otherwise, yes, well, ... the more I listen, the more I say to myself that the mistakes are more errors of youth and song construction. But yes, it's a good time all the same.
6) Pandora, I wasn't a big fan at first, but in the end it's a track ... that suffers from the same grievances as the others, there's some good that's spoiled by unnecessary length and repetition, as well as a construction that doesn't take many risks.
7) Fire and Fury, first parts too long, the voice comes too late and I imagined it to be more aggressive, ... not the right singer to bring this track out of its cocoon. in the middle of the track, you hear too much bass, which interferes with the melodic reading. I'm very dubious about this track, which attracts me with its interesting melodic phrases, but which are too often repeated. I think this is the main problem with the track: very good ideas, but copying and pasting and pasting and pasting ... doesn't work. The same goes for the vocals, which aren't really suited to this track.
7) Fire and Fury, first parts too long, the voice comes too late and I imagined it to be more aggressive, ... not the right singer to bring this track out of its cocoon. in the middle of the track, you hear too much bass, which interferes with the melodic reading. I'm very dubious about this track, which attracts me with its interesting melodic phrases, but which are too often repeated. I think this is the main problem with the track: very good ideas, but copying and pasting and pasting and pasting ... doesn't work. The same goes for the vocals, which aren't really suited to this track.
8) Metal Priest, could this be a reference to Juda's Priest? Good enough for my ears! like it!
Chorus
Well, if you're still here, you're probably wondering what I think? ... As we say in my neck of the woods, it's "half fig, half grape" ... Let's just say it's an album that would have been perfectly released in 1980, at the same time as Juda's Priest's "British steel" ... we're in the same vein, but we're inevitably below them. And that's exactly the main problem with their sound! Despite the years of evolution and hindsight we've gained in this heavy metal / speed metal style, we can avoid certain mistakes that could still be made at the time... Here, it's clearly a lack of experience. What's more, as I was saying to a pure metalhead just yesterday: "a song you write isn't necessarily for you", and with Fire and Fury, it is! The track is clearly made for a singer like Udo Dirkschneider (Accept +/- 1980) and needs to be pared down to become a really great track. But it takes sacrifice to let go of something good!
I'll continue with a remark that also hurts my heart, and to which I often return: Post-production! Unfortunately, for me, not up to scratch, or at least too cheap. Fortunately, there's not so much "masking", but apart from the fact that it's still very "all up front", it's very flat, and above all, you absolutely have to use an EQ to make the mix stand out at least a little! Here's the quick fix I typed into the console to avoid bleeding ears (with a rather large Q! it's a console, not a separate EQ :)). :
Option 1:
+10db at 15000hz
-5db at 2500hz
+5db at 60hz
Option 2:
+10db to 15 000hz
+7db to 10,000hz
-5db to 4000 hz
-7db at 1000 hz
Outro
A good 6.7 all the same, I know it's trashy, but qui bene amat bene castigat! I work on the principle that an old style must either be revisited, or learn from its mistakes and correct them while remaining in the basic style. Here, we have the opposite. Nothing changes and the problems that may have existed at the time are brought to the fore! I say no! No, the flat center doesn't work, no, solos that are always in the same place are boring, no, intros that last longer than they should, no, imperfect solos aren't possible, ... And it's a shame, because you can feel the potential behind it, because it's interesting musically and melodically! And it's even more of a shame because we'd like to enjoy it more than grumble about the mistakes! Come on, let's get it right and come back with a great album next time!