Vore
"Lord of Storms"
(Frozen Solid Music) 

Vore are basically your typical death metal band. They play straight-up death metal, but they do it at a slightly slower pace than most bands of this genre. Most death metal is played at lightning speed, but these guys play it at a more Sabbath-style, funeral march kind of pace. Think Slayer meets Black Sabbath. Vore takes much influence from both bands. Guitarists Page Townsley and John Voelker are very influenced by the Kerry King/Jeff Hanneman guitar duo. Both guitarists also sing, and are vocally influenced by Tom Araya, as well as doing the typical death metal "Cookie Monster" growl. To tell the truth, it really only sounds like one is singing. If they both were, I couldn't tell them apart. The Sabbath part comes in, as I said, with the rather slow pace of the songs. All the songs are played in the fashion, there really isn't one that is fast. The music, however, is quite heavy, and has strength, pounding along like pistons. However, all the songs kind of sound the same, and I found it to be a bit monotonous, plus it's nothing that hasn't been done before. The guys are fairly capable musicians, but a little more variety is needed here. And it wouldn't hurt to write a few faster tunes for the next album. These guys have potential, but they need to develop their songwriting skills a little more. There was one song that was a little different, and that's "Opaque", which is an instrumental played entirely on classical guitar. It's well played, but at almost ten minutes, I found it a bit long. As I said, this band needs a bit of work, but they do have what it takes to be a good death metal band. One other thing they did that I thought was kind of cool, was use a sample of James Earl Jones's voice from the first "Conan The Barbarian" movie, on the second track, "Godslayer".

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