Album Review: Ewïg Frost - Aïn't No Saïnt
Reviewed by Paul Hutchings
I knew little apart from their name before giving this fourth full length album a spin and it’s yet another band whose fans will merely nod knowingly as you express your astonishment at how they can have remained out of your radar for close to 20 years.
Blackened rock n roll, brass sections, thrash, groove. It’s all wrapped up in this fireball of an album from Austrian speed metal punks Ewïg Frost. It’s short, sharp, and infectious. It’s impossible not to get the foot taping along to the sheer indulgence of tracks like ‘Bad Beat Boogie’, with its tinkling keyboards battling with the dance ridden riffing.
It’s almost impossible to label Ewïg Frost. Their sound is over the top, drawing influences from Motörhead to Venom, Discharge to Celtic Frost, Darkthrone to the Stray Cats (albeit in a very tenuous way).
Roaring out of the traps with the dirty riffs of ‘Into the Night’, lead singer, guitars, and composer Nïïtro roars in his gravel-soaked way through a blasting one and a half minutes before segueing into ‘In da Not frisst da Teife de Fliagn’, one of two songs sung in the band’s own Viennese dialect.
It’s non-stop from start to finish, with the real surprise coming mid-point in the album. ‘1918’ is a smouldering, bluesy six-minute workout, demonstrating a more crafted side to the raucous in your face style. Incorporating brass into the song is a masterstroke, adding variety and depth. The guitar work is smoking, controlled yet still threatening to explode and run rampant at any moment.
‘Ain’t No Saint’ isn’t subtle. Hellfire roars from the exhaust pipes of this finely tuned machine. The post-apocalyptic imagery matches their sound, edgy, angry, and totally absorbing. Incorporating numerous guest musicians alongside drummer Chris Pruckner and bassist Jürgen Schallauer (both from Franz Fuexe), Nïïtro also produced the album. With lyrics that cover love, greed, addiction, desire, prejudice, politics, and class warfare, ‘Ain’t No Saint’ is an album that will hopefully appeal to a wide range of metal fans.
