Underground: Armor Force – Exile

Label: Infected Blood / Kill The Light Productions
Band: Armor Force
Origin: China

Bands froms certain parts of the world just do things differently. That definitely goes for Armour Force, who combine folk with death metal vocals in a rather direct way. And by direct I mean that there’s really no blended terrain or common ground being trodden, it is at times literally death metal grunts over sea shanty passages.

This is the first EP by the Beijing band, which was originally released in 2015. Since then they only did a single, on another label from Inner Mongolia. The music the band makes seems to be an odd mix of various styles, but definitely finds some inspiration in the sword and sorcery movements, I gather from the logo.

So trust me, you won’t know what hits you when the first notes arrive. It opens like a melancholic folk song, maybe even some dungeon synth. meandering, notes that suddenly launch into a blast of bagpipes with a ripping guitar behind them. A flute takes over while the sound lowers and a deep grunt emerges. It’s as if you hear the pining Chinese traditionals with a full on metal riffs. It’s a bit much all in all, but sort of cool if you drop the genre definitions.

The following track is titled ‘Jade Horn’ and features the same flute and a more sea shanty like melody, remniscent of Alestorm. It’s sort of along those lines that the song swings onwards. Cheery folk tunes with peculiarly tight and condensed riffing, but always that almost surreal party sound. It makes for a strange album altogether, of which I can’t really detect much of the real idea and concept behind it. The recorded quality of the riffs and vocals is significantly poorer, almost sounding like midi files, particularly on ‘The Day Of Downthrow’. The band drops the synth for a moment to just get the gritty guitars to the front.

I wonder how this band is sounding on  a proper produced record, because when you really listen closely this has a promise to it. Right now, it feels like a strange gaming soundtrack, but still sort of cool.

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