Iron Griffin: Curse of the Sky (2019)

A couple of weeks ago, I covered a band called Smoulder, an epic doom metal band from Canada that released their first album this year.  What made that band stand out was the female singer and a commitment to performing music reminiscent of early 1980's doom metal bands like Manilla Road and Cirith Ungol.  Well, here we have a band very similar to Smoulder who also released their debut album this year.

Iron Griffin is a Finnish duo consisting of Oskari Räsänen, who plays all of the instruments, and Maija Tiljander who performs the vocals.  Iron Griffin's sound is also rooted in early 1980's traditional heavy metal and doom metal, with a lot of influence from the aforementioned groups and some NWOBHM thrown in for good measure.  The band is a side project for Räsänen, who is the drummer for Finnish trad metal band Mausoleum Gate.  Considering he plays all of the instruments, it is probably not wrong to call this a vanity project.

Musically, Iron Griffin plays mostly slower-paced metal that seems to be constantly building up to something amazing, but just cannot quite get there.  A perfect example is "Forgotten Steel" that plods along for awhile, until seemingly starting to work up a faster pace in the chorus sections, with interesting drum fills, and then just sort of falls flat.  It wants to go somewhere exciting, it just cannot make it.  So, in that vein, this is sort of a disappointing record.  The title track probably best captures what Räsänen is going for, with the faster pace and some decent riffs, along with a great bass intro.

In one respect though, this album shows some incredible promise.  That is the vocals of Tiljander who can absolutely shriek like a banshee one moment and provide remarkably haunting vocals the next.  Her best performance is again on the title track with her crooning during the chorus being particularly effective.

There is some promise here.  The band largely pales in comparison to Smoulder, except in the vocal talents of Tiljander.  She is an incredible find and it would be great to see what she could do in a bit better of a band.  She is by far the high point of this album.