Tundra - The Ravens Head

Published September 20 2008

*=Staff's pick	Terminal Bliss* Come Sanity Voices Of The Night Going Down Second To None The Ravens Head*

Genre	Heavy Metal	Stig Vikström	Vocals
Tracks	6	Andreas Fors	Guitar
Runningtime	29 Min.	-	Guitar
Label		Jonas Edström	Bass
Release	2008	Ola Grönlund	Drums
Country	Sweden	-	Keyboard
Similar artists	Iron Maiden, Morgana Lefay, Judas Priest

Tundra hails from the northern parts of Sweden and started out as a one man project where Andreas Fors recorded some of his own songs at home. After a while Andreas got bored of this situation and recruited a couple of his friends and the first incarnation of Tundra was formed. Together they recorded their first demo in 2007, entitled The North Will Rise. Even though the demo was quite poorly produced it clearly showed the capacity of Andreas' song writing skills, mainly in epic songs like Something Wicked and Next Stop Purgatory.

A year later Tundra returns with a second demo, entitled The Ravens Head, and what strikes me at first is that the sound is so much better than on the debut. What also is quite evident I'm afraid is that song writing quality has decreased a bit. Yet again it's classic heavy metal with driven guitars, no changes there. Tundra's main asset is without a doubt the guitar work and if you like the heavy metal genre from back in the days this might appeal to you.

What I miss on The Ravens Head is the great melodies that we could hear on the debut. Terminal Bliss, Come Sanity and the brilliant somewhat epic title track really shows the capacity of Tundra. The rest however can be looked upon as trivial fillers. The potential is most definitely there (just listen to the title track!) but I hope they will come up with better melodies on the entire album next time.

Performance	Originality	Production	Vocals	Songwriting
7	5	7	5	6

Summary
6 chalices of 10 - Hawk