(Heavy/Power Metal) Silverdollar - Morte - 2011, FLAC (image+.cue), lossless

Esa Englund - Vocals: Fredrik Hall - Bass: Mats Hjerp - Drums: Ola Berg - Guitars:

---

Here at CackBlabath one of the best things about doing what we do is coming across bands that we know nothing about, and which would otherwise never appear on the musical radar. Sometimes it’s not exactly brilliant, but occasionally, just occasionally, something comes along which so comprehensively floats your boat that it’s time to consider building an ark.
Now, hitherto I knew nothing about Sweden’s Silverdollar, and the PR blurb was suitably vague about what could be expected from their new album Morte. Things start off with a long-ish spoken intro, something about “Approaching the challenge of climate change with a sense of profound joy”. So there you go, Silverdollar are one of those prog-metal bands with a social conscience then….
Well, yes and no. Think the best bits of that genre without the pretentious bollocks that so often gets grafted on. Musically it is an interesting mix, It’s big riff and chorus driven proper heavy metal in a Queensryche-esque progressive vein which, in spite of the fairly serious subject matter, never disappears up it’s own arse, the message never getting in the way of the music.
It’s been a while since I’ve heard anything with quite this immediate impact, it just sounds right. Of course that is helped by a stand out production job which fits the overall feeling of, for want of a better description, quality. The guitar tone in particular is crisp and clear, with the by now expected virtuoso display of technical widdlyness, showing off the band’s obvious prowess without ever feeling the need to stop the song to shoehorn in a guitar solo.
There is certainly a thematic thread tying the tracks together but this is not a ramed-down-your-throat concept album. And it really does feel like an album, and not just a collection of songs which were thrown together. There is an old fashioned ebb and flow here and impressive balance between epic feeling progressive metal, as displayed in tracks such as the titular Morte, and more out and out high velocity head banging power(ful) metal.
This is an album which should have massive appeal across a broad swathe of the musical spectrum. It’s highly technical yet brilliantly melodic and completely accessible.

Exact Audio Copy V0.99 prebeta 4 from 23. January 2008
EAC extraction logfile from 5. October 2011, 10:56
Silverdollar / Morte
Used drive  : ATAPI   iHAP122   9   Adapter: 3  ID: 0
Read mode               : Secure
Utilize accurate stream : Yes
Defeat audio cache      : Yes
Make use of C2 pointers : No
Read offset correction                      : 6
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out          : No
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks   : No
Null samples used in CRC calculations       : Yes
Used interface                              : Installed external ASPI interface
Used output format              : User Defined Encoder
Selected bitrate                : 40 kBit/s
Quality                         : High
Add ID3 tag                     : No
Command line compressor         : C:\Program Files\Exact Audio Copy\flac.exe
Additional command line options : -6 -V %s
TOC of the extracted CD
     Track |   Start  |  Length  | Start sector | End sector
    ---------------------------------------------------------
        1  |  0:00.00 |  7:30.20 |         0    |    33769
        2  |  7:30.20 |  3:54.69 |     33770    |    51388
        3  | 11:25.14 |  5:00.23 |     51389    |    73911
        4  | 16:25.37 |  4:18.56 |     73912    |    93317
        5  | 20:44.18 |  4:50.22 |     93318    |   115089
        6  | 25:34.40 |  4:19.05 |    115090    |   134519
        7  | 29:53.45 |  4:16.30 |    134520    |   153749
        8  | 34:10.00 |  5:26.53 |    153750    |   178252
        9  | 39:36.53 |  3:15.44 |    178253    |   192921
       10  | 42:52.22 |  3:50.36 |    192922    |   210207
       11  | 46:42.58 |  3:44.09 |    210208    |   227016
       12  | 50:26.67 |  3:53.72 |    227017    |   244563
Range status and errors
Selected range
     Filename D:\Download\Silverdollar - Morte.wav
     Peak level 96.6 %
     Range quality 100.0 %
     Copy CRC 3F3EB8D8
     Copy OK
No errors occurred
AccurateRip summary
Track  1  not present in database
Track  2  not present in database
Track  3  not present in database
Track  4  not present in database
Track  5  not present in database
Track  6  not present in database
Track  7  not present in database
Track  8  not present in database
Track  9  not present in database
Track 10  not present in database
Track 11  not present in database
Track 12  not present in database
None of the tracks are present in the AccurateRip database
End of status report