塔罗圣徒 / Tarot Saint - 2012 (2012) - By far the best metalcore release ever witnessed - 85% (29/08/12)

Usually, I'm not at all into modern metal music and especially into metalcore and similar stuff and that's why this record from a rather unknown Chinese band that I discovered by pure coincidence hit me as hard as a howling train. Tarot Saint find exactly the right potion that mixes melodic and melancholic moments with harsher and agressive parts on this release and make bands such as Trivium look like silly mainstream plastic musicians for immature children.

Already the introduction blew me away. It has a very fond and relaxing atmosphere, some intriguing folk influences and beautiful acoustic guitars that gripped me right from the start. I thought that this was only a short opening sequence after all and thought that the upcoming songs would be less convincing. The following tracks are indeed different and more modern but they are nevertheless all of a very high quality. Only the song "悲怆之秋" also includes some minimal Chinese folk influences in the background and thanks to a very charismatic chorus, this track is maybe teh strongest one on here or it has at least the best commercial potential.

"绽放" starts with some melancholic guitar leads of a rather traditional heavy metal blend. This makes me think of the Gothenburg melodic death metal scene that is influenced by bands such as Iron Maiden concerning the melodic guitar work. These harmonies are now mixed with darker, harder and somewhat thrash metal orientated parts. One even finds three different kinds of vocal performances that create a lot of diversity in this song. First of all, there are smooth screams in the verses, than we have very melodic vocals with some slightly distorted effects over it giving the song a modern touch in the bridges and later even normal and quite catchy clean vocals. I've never heard such a high degree of diversity in a metalcore track before and I can tell you that this is just the beginning.

What follows is an excellent mixture of more direct and fast paced tracks and more laid back and emotionally longing songs. "拉尼娜" is a good example for the first category with really heavy and slow riffs somewhere between doom and thrash metal that create a desperate atmosphere and some very energizing vocals that make the whole thing sound very authentic in relation to the emotionally driven lyrics about the La Niña phenomenon. Concerning the second category, one can find songs such as "西楚霸王" that has an eerie and melancholic intro which reminds me of some old half ballads of Metallica before the track meanders in a very versatile way between dark verses featuring some sharp riffs and rather light choruses with addicting melodies. The whole concept is from time to time interrupted by short breaks that give you the time to calm down and focus on what comes next. That's why this song sounds a little bit more elaborated than most of the tracks on here. The best example for this progressive vein is though "混沌黎明" which happens to be the longest track on this debut record of the promising band from Beijing. The atmospheric breaks throughout the song make me think of bands such as Katatonia, Novembers Doom or even The Old Dead Tree. Once again, the mixture of heavier riffs and softer melodic parts represent a dominating factor that the band uses adequately.

Sadly, the record gets a little bit less spectacular towards the end. Especially the final two songs only focus on the agressive parts and forget about truly gripping hooks or atmospheric melodies. This being said, the rest of the record is musically diversified, highly emotionally driven and also very well produced and makes this surprising gem by far my favourite record of a genre that I really disliked before. If you feel the same, try this band out as their album as well as their first EP can be heard for free on their official side. Maybe these guys will change your mind about metalcore as it was the case for me.