The Finnish melodic black pagan metal outfit Catamenia has been around since 1995 and have been releasing albums steadily through Germany’s Massacre Records since the first one. VIII – The Time Unchained is, as the title might reveal, their eight effort, which is quite an accomplishment on itself. It is their first record we receive at Metalrage, so let’s find out what we’ve been missing out on, or not.

 

Catamenia themselves call their style of music Nordic metal, which can be translated to pagan metal, or melodic black/dark metal. I just find it hard to really pinpoint their sound, because the overall sound isn’t really black metal, nor does the folky side of pagan metal take the upper hand. It seems that Catamenia has found a good balance between elements of black, death, folk and thrash metal in my ears, for the dynamics of the songs and the average songwriting level are actually pretty good. They're even interesting from time to time. It’s just too bad that a bit of an unpolished production sound takes a bit of the listening pleasure away, but it’s nothing to be really concerned about.

 

Checking their page at Metal Archives, one finds out that this band has been severely haunted by line-up changes. Even this new album brings a new vocalist to the front, and maybe even more importantly, they didn’t bring keyboards to the recordings for this record (for the first time ever). And I’m glad they did so, for I feel it would have ruined the atmosphere a bit.

 

Well overall I have to say that VIII – The Time Unchained is certainly not a bad record, it just doesn’t really attract me that much for it doesn’t really stand out on any front. The combination of heavy grunts, screams and clean vocals is not really amazing, and after a song or six the music becomes a bit boring to listen to as well. The album ends with three cover songs, one of which is Faith No More’s ‘From Out Of Nowhere’, which is just too much for me. Don’t do things like that please. For the rest I still recommend fans of pagan metal and related styles to give Catamenia’s new record a try and find out for yourself whether you like these Finnish lads or not.