Griffen

Reviews :

Griffen - Demo Album
Posted : 27.08.2007
Done By : Valeria Myspace : www.myspace.com/griffentheband

Thinking about Swedish metal scene, we easily think about Swedish death and metal bands of this sort,so maybe it could be strange to find bands that come out extreme sonorities. But Griffen are a band of this kind, and they do this in a good way. We listen to their last demo and we hear a nice mixture of hard rock and 80’s heavy metal, with scratched guitars and tempos a few plain but chasing; in a certain way Griffen’s music is embodying the first idea of ‘metal’, even if the recording is not the best and so the sound loses a bit his significance.

The demo is composed by 4 songs that pleasantly slide during the listening, also because of the warm voice of the singer Jörgen Söderberg, while the guitar episodes seem taking their influences on NWOBHM stuff, especially with clever and forceful solos, actually gifted of a good technical typically 80’s (and those are the most merit of the band).

Starting with an expressive riff and a vocal exploit –maybe a few out-of-place-, ‘Mystery’ is a powerful song, in a certain way similar to Bonjovi’s first works, with an heavy refrain and a deep purple-like solo.

Going on, ‘Cut down’ is a more hardrock moment, with an interesting dissonant refrain and aggressive vocal lines, ending with an important solo –we looove pentatonic =D - and guitar cues as Joe Satriani.

The next song, called ‘Assassun’, has a name that already underlines the peculiarity of the sound: in fact this is the most experimental part of the demo, especially thanks to the melancholic strophe, while the guitar solo hits us more than the previous. Actually this song could take us thinking about power metal mid-tempos, and in the final part the singing has something in commons with Tobias Sammet from Edguy.

In the last song ‘too numb to know’ we continues to listen Deep Purple’s and 70’s influences, sure good laboured through 80’s sonorities.

So, walking on this way, when they will publish their full-length, Griffen could sure give us something good! Satisfy our expectations! Cheers.

Rating : 7/10