Storm Warning - Count Raven

Storm Warning by Count Raven is yet another classic doom metal album - released in 1990, it was the debut of the band which was originally called Stormwarning! The band's sound has quite a lot in common with Black Sabbath but the Swedes do have their own style, it's just that is tricky to describe. Despite the sludginess and heavy yet slow pace of the doom metal the band play, they tend to put forward rather confrontational lyrics - least not in my favourite song of the album which is In The Name of Rock and Roll where the band take a snipe at glam metal and the artists that play it with lyrics questioning the sexuality of the people that take part in glam ...  Read the complete review

Count Raven are the deservedly overlooked band of doom metal's second wave, firstly for arriving too late to make any kind of impact on the eighties scene, and more importantly due to their essential lack of any original traits, apart from an unhealthy preoccupation with keyboards in later releases. The main problem with their debut 'Storm Warning' is just how boring it all is - doom metal is slow and ponderous by its nature, the antithesis of fast metal genres, but here there's little in the way of an emotive or atmospheric justification for the speed, leaving every song sounding overlong and over-repetitive. Christian Lindersson's vocals are in the style of ...  Read the complete review