Orchid
Mouths of Madness

Two years ago the band that would be characterized as the ‘Black Sabbath of our century’, released their first full-length work, under the name of “Capricorn”. I’m obviously talking about Orchid; a doom metal band coming from San Francisco, California. Even if they are active for six years, they have composed a variety of releases, tree EP’s and one full length album. On 26’s of April, their new work, “Mouths Of Madness“, came out of nowhere, to enlighten us about the future of the band.

First things first, the main problem with Orchid, which is pointed out by everyone, is the fact they totally sound alike Black Sabbath. “Capricorn’” had songs where the listener could easily point out a Sabbath’s song from which Orchid took a loan in riffs and melodies and song’s structures. For Orchid, the ultimate task for their next movement was to break their connection with Sabbath and find a personality. Although, “Mouths of Madness” exudes personal elements, the band fails to create something really special for the music audience.

The record encloses some great vocal work from the band’s vocalist Theo Midnell, as well as wonderful, melodic guitar solos. Orchid kept their vintage sound, however they placed a lot of new elements in their songs, such as piano (just listen to “Mountains of Steel“) and harmonica (in “Marching Dogs Of War“). Also, the songs are stretched out a bit, having longer duration and a sufficient amount of riffs alterations. All those facts point out the will of Orchid to create something better than their previous full length record.

On the other hand, the tracks are unequal. Whenever Orchid show off their personality as a unit we have strong songs such as ‘Mouths of Madness’. In other tracks, we can easily identify ‘Sabbathic’ riffs; the intro riff of “Leaving It All Behind” sounds slightly like the main riff of “Paranoid”, vocals of “Mountains of Steel” reminds of “A National Acrobat” and “Silent One” is a clone between Slayer’s ‘South Of Heaven’ melodies and Black Sabbath’s ‘ Into The Void’. The similarity between other bands and Orchid is something that they have to turn the backs to, especially when the riffs are exactly the same!