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Track Listing: Arche The Blood Eagle Wolverine Bastards The Sound of the River Fire on the Mountain The Others & The Look Slave Welcome to the Asylum Then We Die

Rising from the ashes of the band Windir after the death of frontman Valfar, Norwegian metallers Vreid (Norwegian word for wrath) have combined an interesting mixture of black metal and rock 'n roll. This 'black and roll' brigade includes members Sture on vocals and guitar, Strom on guitar, Hvalle on bass and Steingrim on drums.

The rawness of Sture's black metal vocals mixed with classic guitar riffs along the lines of old Metallica or Sepultura definitely work together nicely. Something I would consider black metal combined like this with eighties metal to be rather cheesy but the tracks are dark and heavy, and carry a considerable amount of power. The first track "Arche" begins with some heavy riffing that supplies a nice groove backed by Steingrim's intense drumming. Strom's vocals are absolutely venomous and the guitar solo is very prominent, carrying nice melody with it.

"The Blood Eagle" was a little disappointing in the fact that it carried a typical rhythm that I've heard on plenty of metal albums in the past, nothing here really that stood out to me. "Wolverine Bastards" throws you into the pit with vicious blastbeats and shredding guitar that keeps going at breakneck speed until a couple minutes in where it's broken up by a melodic solo and then throws you right back in. "Fire on the Mountain" contains more classic guitar shredding and ripping solo but the only thing that's worrying me here is repetitiveness, there's nothing really that differentiates one track from the other. It's all incredibly talented but I want something that's going to make me stand up and notice and so far it's not doing it for me.

"Slave" is the only one that changes up the album by slowing down a bit to a nice groove, and you can hear some of Sture's cleaner vocals. The album-closer "Then We Die" finishes with haunting guitar and melody supported with Sture's dark lyrics. "V" is a decent album that shows a lot of promise. What they lack in variety, which is something that can always be worked on in the future, Vreid more than makes up in talent.