Vision Bleak

Deep vocals and thick guitar riffs make goth rock the dominant flavour as the Vision Bleak’s latest album gets underway. Intensity, speed and heaviness replace rock with metal before the expected Eastern melodies kick in on the second part of the record, a trio of songs called "The Black Pharaoh Trilogy” (good soundtrack fodder for a classic mummy movie). More consistent than the band’s last release, The Wolves Go Hunt Their Prey is also fairly unexciting. Here and there the record becomes plodding and turns in on itself. But when the momentum picks up, the music begins to resonate with a gloomy, eerie charm, as on "Evil is of Old Date” and rousing album closer "By Our Brotherhood with Seth.” Saving the best songs for the end at least leaves you feeling that you might want more.