Grimgotts - Dragons Of The Ages • GRIMM Gent

Grimgotts – Dragons Of The Ages

08/02/2020

Somewhere in the United Kingdom in 2015 the band Grimgotts was formed as a Harry Potter themed symphonic power metal joke parody band. Soon they found out that didn’t turn out as expected, so they decided to shift the focus to more general fantasy and nautical themes. All their musical adventures take place in the fictional world Vale, which started in 2016 with a first EP called ‘Here Be Dragonlords’. After that they released two more EP’s and in 2017 it was time to release their first album ‘Lions Of The Sea’. Now, Grimgotts sets sail for their most ambitious adventure yet, a second album called ‘Dragon Of The Ages’ about a war between dragons, sea-creatures and men. When you take a look at the album cover, they perfectly translated their theme into the drawings. On the front you see the battle, on the back there’s a cool dragon between the waves breaking against the rocks. Grimgotts consists of:

Andy Barton (vocals)
Fabio Garau (keys)
David Hills (guitars)
Nelson Moreira (bass)
Mo Abdelgadir (drums)

When you put on ‘Dragons Of The Ages’, the first thing you hear are waves. After that there’s a lively intro and so the first song ‘War’s Come To Our Shores’ has begun. You immediately hear 3 different kinds of vocals, a woman soprano, a male tenor and Andy‘s vocals. These 3 vocal styles form the general vocal setting of this album.

I don’t know who the female singer is, but I noticed something in the song ‘War At Dawn’. Andy seems to be multi-vocal, since his ‘normal’ voice seems to merge with the tenor voice in this song. That’s why I suspect he’s singing both. You’ll also hear grunts in this song, which also came as a surprise to me. That means there are four styles of vocals present in this album, which is necessary because otherwise it would sound too soft and it would get boring after a while.

Musically, the emphasis is on David‘s strong guitar skills and Fabio‘s lively and epic keyboard tunes from Fabio. In the song ‘The Last Dragon Warriors’ there’s even a cool solo. They bring variation here by using different tempos in their songs, but also by using extra instruments. I suspect that these are mainly simulated by the keyboards, but there is for example an accordion sound in ‘The King Under The Sea’.

Grimgotts used the right instruments, or simulated them with the keys, to highlight the theme. Unfortunately, they don’t give me the feeling to be a fantasy band. To me they sound like a combination of Alestorm and Lagerstein. Also the music sometimes transcends the vocals. Still, ‘Dragons Of The Ages’ has made me curious about what Grimgotts bring live, because I think it will be a big pirate party.