Be´lakor
The Frail Tide

May 2007
Released: 2007, Self-released
Rating: 3.5/5
Reviewer: Luxi Lahtinen

Be´lakor hails from Australia and they draw their inspiration from the grandeur in nature, the ideals of paganism, and the drive to recapture true spirituality and heroism in an age of materialism and religious sterility, as it´s stated in their bio.



Musically these 5, obviously relatively young by age (according to the pictures of the band anyway), Australians remind of early Amorphis (the TALES -era) a bit - added with sort of Gothenburg´ish vibes here and there even if it must be said that they cannot be considered guilty of plagiarizing any band directly. On the other hand, there´s a bunch of elements in Be´lakor´s sound that Amorphis would never touch even with a long stick now when they got mentioned here as a fairly good comparison.



Be´lakor has a good take on their style. They mix melancholic and melodic parts together with more aggressive elements that create a quite successful yet very harmonious wholeness, even without pushing themselves that much in order to accomplish that impact for their songs. Be´lakor uses a lot of acoustic passages for bringing in a sort of pure melancholy handshake into their songs, and setting the songs for a certain mood so that listeners can easily concentrate on enjoying the outcome of their songs the best they can. “Sanguinary”, the last song on THE FRAIL TIDE, is a perfect song to describe Be´lakor´s potential to write real standout songs, and in that way getting opportunities to truly shine amongst a new mass of people. If they manage to write material of this quality, I´m positive we´ll hear a lot of more from them in the future. The seed of potentiality and talent has already been sowed on the fertile ground of Be´lakor. The first fruit of that bounteous harvest comes in a result of THE FRAIL TIDE.