Vulture Industries - Stranger Times album review

Nordic eccentrics open up an exhilarating new box of tricks

Cover art for Vulture Industries - Stranger Times album

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Since their 2007 debut, Bergen’s Vulture Industries have revelled in the theatrical, eccentric, avant-garde territory that became a Norwegian phenomenon thanks to Arcturus, Ulver, Solefald and Fleurety. 2013’s honed masterwork of carnivalesque prog metal, The Tower, was the most satisfying showcase for VI’s singular strengths, but with their fourth album they’ve stripped it right down, developing a big arena rock itch that they have audible fun scratching. Openers Tales Of Woe and As The World Burns are some of the band’s simplest, most accessible material, and while the heartfelt acoustic blues of My Body, My Blood and Gentle Touch Of A Killer’s declamatory doom churn make a versatile pairing, they maintain the album’s more straightforward, uncluttered approach. While it doesn’t ape the full pop trajectory of new Ulver, there’s a similar exuberance, simplicity and lightness of touch invigorating the band’s methodology, the ghost of Bowie hanging discreetly over the proceedings.

Chris Chantler

Chris has been writing about heavy metal since 2000, specialising in true/cult/epic/power/trad/NWOBHM and doom metal at now-defunct extreme music magazine Terrorizer. Since joining the Metal Hammer famileh in 2010 he developed a parallel career in kids' TV, winning a Writer's Guild of Great Britain Award for BBC1 series Little Howard's Big Question as well as writing episodes of Danger Mouse, Horrible Histories, Dennis & Gnasher Unleashed and The Furchester Hotel. His hobbies include drumming (slowly), exploring ancient woodland and watching ancient sitcoms.