
A relatively concise album, Valley of Shadows is thirty seven minutes long, and has eight tracks: 1) Black Magic Summer; 2) Red Moon Forming; 3) Drifting Alone; 4) Strike and Disappear; 5) Broken Mirror; 6) Tyrant on the Throne; 7) I Feel No Pain; 8) The Bleeding Heart; exceedingly marvelous all the way through, the album is a genuine demonstration of creative musical vivacity, that recognizes no boundaries to the landscape of its restless, audacious and sensitive musical horizon. With the gracious atmosphere of a hazardous and scalding desert that is about to melt everything on its way, the furious, but uplifting sound of Duel definitely lives on the groundbreaking edge proposed by the mordacity of its pungent style.
With a heavy sound whose tempestuous, but groovy melodies puts the band in a very particular category of hard rock, the expansive and vibrant elements that are abundant in the periphery as well as in the main nucleus of the band’s creative diagram conceives a very balanced sound, that is never predictable or monotonous. The synergy displayed by the ostensibly solid virtues that are highlighted in their complex sound arrangements exposes a very dense and methodic musical alignment, that dilapidates in a concentrated panorama of extraordinary artistic grace a sensational conjuncture of qualities, that are rarely combined in such a vivacious manner.
An almost impeccable album, that displays a genuine style conceived in very exceptional and singular musical perspectives, Valley of Shadows reveals itself to be a very elegant and original work, with no artistic nor technical deficiencies whatsoever. A greatly conceived and executed work, Duel deserves to be seen as a fundamental group in the psychedelic hard rock underground scene, as they are ready to take, to shake and to reinvent the genre, with the aim to create something extraordinarily exciting and authentic, as only a few other bands have the abilities to do so, with the same amount of competence and professionalism.
Wagner