Hailing from France comes the latest release from John McEntee’s Ibex Moon Records in the form of Bloody Sign’s full length effort Vana Vigala Loits. Over the past few months I’ve received a lot of promo material from France-based death metal acts and I’ve come to realize one thing; the majority of French death metal bands are boring, unoriginal and very limited creative wise. Unfortunately, the same can be said for Vana Vigala Loits. Bloody Sign play blackened death metal with plenty of blasts, high pitched guitar tones with vocals ranging from typical generic black metal snarls and Incantation-esque growls. The majority of the material on this release is up-tempo, though things slow down to mid-tempo from time to time. The group’s bio claims the music is in the vein of Pestilence, Vital Remains and Asphyx, but don’t believe what you read. While they do an awful cover of Pestilence’s "Parracide" the group certainly isn’t of the caliber of Pestilence or Asphyx and seem to be inspired by bands like Incantation, Deicide, Vader and the more boring black metal groups like Dark Funeral. The drumming is generally somewhere between blasting black metal and relentless Vader drum kit mashing. The riffing is of average quality with obvious influences distinguishable on each track, and, unfortunately, a lot of same boring riffs are repeated over and over ad nauseam. The vocals are pretty strong, with the lows being in the typical Incantation vocalist range, and the highs having a fair amount of meat to them so it doesn’t sound like the vocalist’s balls are being pinched in a vice. Midway through the release is a bizarre all-female tribal chanting that goes on for two and a half minutes. Not only does this kill all of the musical momentum the album had up until that point, it’s also incredibly annoying to listen to. After that goes on any interest I may have had in the album is completely killed, though after that the music goes from generic and boring to really generic and really boring. The album ends with a horrible live recording of some song, which I assume is probably from earlier demo material. I never understood why bands even bother including live tracks to albums, especially live tracks whose audio quality can only be described as complete fucking shit. Death metal bands need to learn from KISS and start overdubbing their shitty live recordings with studio fixes. On the whole, I honestly have to say I’m surprised Ibex Moon released this album, as the quality of the other releases is so much better than this one. Not recommended, unless you have a thing for listening to old women wailing in foreign tongues and boring death metal.

Written By: Teufel