ARGUS - From Fields Of Fire

9 songs
55:04 minutes
***** ***
Cruz Del Sur

Bandpage

Although having been around for over ten years, releasing regularly albums, EPs and singles, I never really got Argus on my radar, until earlier this year when their vocalist Butch Balich released an album with former Fates Warning guitarist Victor Arduini. Dawn Of Ages was a piece of finest progressive doom metal with sometimes self-indulgent, but still pleasant long tracks. So when I heard that Argus would release their fourth longplayer half a year later, I was of course intrigued to spend more time with this North-eastern American metal band.

Signed to the Italian quality metal label Cruz Del Sur, Argus deliver this brand of American flavoured metal that we have come to expect from their publishing house. And yet Argus don’t play typical US metal, but rather a very traditional kind of heavy metal with very clear doom influences. Apart from an intro and an outro, with the outro merging into the intro if you listen on repeat, we get seven songs that average seven minutes apiece. The production is powerful and very warm, giving the music a vintage metal sound that has equal room for every instrument. Upfront is Butch Balich’s strong yet melodic voice that is one of the most charismatic you will find in the genre currently. While the first half of the album contains the band’s shorter songs (between five and seven minutes long), the second half starts with the epic eleven-minute monster Infinite Lives, Infinite Doors, and is followed by the two seven minute tracks Hour Of Longing and No Right To Grieve where the doom influences become more apparent, with parallels to Solitude Aeternus, Trouble and to a lesser extent Candlemass.

I have come across quite a few bands that try to merge traditional heavy metal with doom metal, but none have mastered this as seamlessly well as Argus. It seems obvious that they know their source material, but above all they are good songwriters that master their instruments, and have one of the most memorable vocalists. Add to this the really great production, and you get with From Fields Of Fire a wonderful heavy doom metal experience that no fan of traditional metal can allow themselves to miss.