Reviewed by Dylan Raine

Artist:  Halladrol
Album: The Last Mile on the Earth (EP 2012)
Date of Release: Downloadable release – 6th June 2012, hard release – late 2012, early 2013.
Label: Violent Journey

1. The Last Mile on the Earth
2. Black New Stars
3. No Rest for the Holy

Halladrol had been in the mindset of ‘Lord Heikkinen’ for a while and has had ambitions of doing something different for some time. With the roots of this project starting back in early 1990´s Soulgrind was born and at the beginning it was a one man project doing avant-garde dark metal. At the time things were a bit different, All was recorded on 8-track recorder over-dubbing again and again and again…
Soulgrind is now more a band as one person and they have many different views in regards of doing things, Lord felt that there should be one project which is totally under his control. No compromises and so Halladrol was born in early 2012.

Starting with the gentle chirps of birds and bells before an early onset of a typical gospel church setting delivers you into the mass mess of noise and confused musical surroundings. There seems to be a real lack of specific direction throughout in the ‘The Last Mile on the Earth’ as unlike the band try to explain it as “A tale of last moments on this planet. It might also tell a story of one´s mind. What happens inside, when the last moments are coming closer and closer” and yet there is a very clear understanding of any of that and although some of the techniques hidden in the depths of sounds are quite clever, the overall sound and track itself is very lost behind everything else.

Onto ‘Black New Stars’ and we’re given a far more technical track starting off with super dive bombs and speed picking with delays and many obscurities leading the way; However when all this does calm down the song again looses all sustenance throughout the vocal sections.

With the horns and chanting within ‘No Rest For The Holy’ I really liked this introduction, full of wonderful textures and obscurities. By far the most complete sounding track on this EP. Even the vocals seem to add up and feel more complete. With the mix of time signature oddities and complexities this song really does give the listener a better example of what the other songs were lacking.

As you progress through the EP one thing seems clear if nothing else does, that there is a serious lack of direction here. Although the mood seems to be that of “be as dark as humanly possible regardless to musicality or sustenance”. With a few clever passages of harmonies, I doubt it is enough to excite the darkest of metal fan out there.

3/10