Search - Siebenburgen :: Plagued Be Thy Angel

Siebenburgen's Best

Justin Gaines | 05/24/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I love this album! Tight and speedy riffs. Very, very, VERY scooped sound (for the tone, think of Metallica's "And Justice for All" or Iced Earth's "Something Wicked This Way Comes") Melodic, but not too melodic. Very evil sounding death vocals. Some nice female vocals - but not too much of them. This is real, brutal metal in its raw form. Play this loud and your ears will bleed!
Siebenburgen was the band that got me into this kind of metal, and this is their best album. I can't stop listening to it. My favorite songs are tracks 4, 5, and 6, but the whole album is great. (Also, the album cover is very nice). For a more gentle introduction try their album Delictum, but I think you can start here even if you don't generally like death vocals."

Creative Swedish Black Metal

Justin Gaines | Northern Virginia | 02/16/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I'm not a huge black metal fan by any means, but there are times when the genre's intensity and sheer malevolence is exactly what I need to hear. In addition to bands like Dimmu Borgir, Hollenthon, and Borknagar, Sweden's Siebenburgen stand out as one of those rare black metal bands that has come to rely less on garish imagery and shock value Satanism, instead letting their music and creativity do the talking.



2002's Plagued Be Thy Angel is the band's fourth album, and is a big step forward (on just about every level) from 2000's Delictum. The songwriting, musicianship, vocal performances, production, even the graphics are all at a much higher level on this album. The band still has the gothic elements it used on Delictum, but the album as a whole is a tighter, artful black metal album on par with recent Dimmu Borgir (minus the expensive symphonic elements of course). The atmospheric keyboards and operatic female vocals bring to mind Sirenia or Tristania, and at times tend to push the album a bit too far into goth metal territory, but Plagued Be Thy Angel still comes across as a fierce black metal album right down to the closing track, a sinister reworking of the Judas Priest classic Jawbreaker.



Old school fans of Norwegian-style black metal probably won't find this album evil enough, but fans of any of the bands I mentioned earlier should enjoy Plagued Be Thy Angel."