El Doom & The Born Electric: El Doom & The Born Electric

Nordic metal maestro powers up.

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Self-styed “young veteran” of the Norwegian metal scene, Ole Petter Andreasson has set aside his racy past with Thulsa Doom and the Cumshots for his new project, which was written and produced at his own studio with a core band and a bunch of local guests.

While the guitars tend to tread the time-honoured path of riffs from Deep Purple to Opeth – sometimes all in the same song – the drums rock with a dextrous beat that keeps everyone on alert, whatever the tempo.

But it’s Andreasson’s vocals, pitched somewhere between a howl and a scream with their distinctive enunciation that hog your attention through the seven lengthy tracks, along with his keen ear for a majestic prog hook.

His voice can run through a gamut of emotions without ever getting overly melodramatic, although there’s an awesome power to some of the choruses. He knows how to play with stereo, too.

Hugh Fielder

Hugh Fielder has been writing about music for 47 years. Actually 58 if you include the essay he wrote about the Rolling Stones in exchange for taking time off school to see them at the Ipswich Gaumont in 1964. He was news editor of Sounds magazine from 1975 to 1992 and editor of Tower Records Top magazine from 1992 to 2001. Since then he has been freelance. He has interviewed the great, the good and the not so good and written books about some of them. His favourite possession is a piece of columnar basalt he brought back from Iceland.