Review Summary: Doomed.
Most bands that I know often start off on a great foot. And why wouldn't they? They’ve got good ideas, fresh meat, and ready to record. When it comes to doom metal, Black Sabbath is immediately the first thing that comes to my mind. When I think of creative riffs, no muffled vocals, production that is decent enough to please Jesus, and much much more, this album does not come to mind. Black Sabbath was the pioneering act for the age of doom metal, no doubts there right? So…why does a band insist on breaking off from the greatest influence out there to create a record that will serve them as the roots to their success? A debut needs to do two things: 1, it must give the audience a feel as to what you will have to offer in the future. And 2, it must not suck. This album fails to accomplish goal number one, and taps out with rule number two.
Don’t ask me how they did it, but this band did eventually come around with albums like ‘Shades of God’, and ‘In Requiem’. How those albums got any publicity whatsoever after a terrifying start like this, I cannot fathom. But I can say that this album can be easily avoided with a slight touch of perseverance, and a little common sense. We should all know about the standard structure of a doom song, and what the main prose of it ought to consist of, and if a band wants to take a small step outside the regulated boundaries, that’s alright, encouraged actually. But what this band does with their debut is not only fail to create a cohesive production, but they also manage to bite off way more than they can chew.
When the album starts off with the track “Intro” (Whoa, we’re getting pretty fancy today, aren’t we?) it’s pretty hard to tell exactly what negativity this album holds in store for you, and I’d hate to have to call this the best track of the album. With its eerie attitude, and the main scene it portrays, I feel obligated to dub it the best track indeed. A huge issue with the next few tracks is that they have absolutely no inclusion with what the “Intro” set up. They do not follow the same formula, the vocals do not sound eerie at all, and the riffs are way way way too slow for the atmosphere change. With trite and uninspired interludes of guitar solos poking around in songs like “Paradise Lost”, and vocals that diminish any form of realism they had in them to begin with, songs like this are easily avoidable, and in all realty, should never be looked into.
OK, so maybe I’m being a bit too harsh on the setup anyway. This album in relevance is a death/doom album, so the grumbled vocals are to be expected, but the main issue here is that the same old intruding growl is so heavily recycled, it is unbearable. And the boring instrumentals behind it in terrible songs like “Frozen Illusion” only make this attribute more detrimental to the albums survival, which is all but deteriorated in terms of possibility. There is very little this album can give you considering its death feel to it, now that we’ve excluded the uninspired guitars, the awful distortions in songs like “”Lost Paradise”, and the vocals that have no feeling at all. So what’s left? After all, most of this album is simply recycled content from the previous track, onto the next.
Well, I don’t know about you, but at this point, this album is finished for me. It’s more of a challenge than anything else to get through, (ram through I should say), an album that has about as much purpose as the title of it. Even the outro can’t calm this jumbled mess down a bit. The distortions barely composed of an old medieval like composure with that same ***ing growl behind it, this is my 3rd time listening to it as I review this, and I can’t take it anymore. This band has a lot of potential, and you’ll see that if you choose to explore the latter parts of their career. But for now, it would serve you best if you just disregarded this album as a whole, and moved along to your next playlist.
