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Review Summary: Into The Vanishing Light, ultimately fails to be the intellectual and creative masterpiece that it so desperately wants to be. Let's be honest, there is a lot of overly simple music out there; Music that to all intents and purposes doesn't particularly aim to be taken in any way seriously, or to even try to be considered artistic... There's a lot of hip hop that relies on beats alone, pop that just regurgitates the same metaphors of love, and rock songs that are packed with arena ready, sing-along choruses etc. Due to this whenever a band or artist tries to the efforts of their musicianship beyond this, it is not only commendable, but should also be applauded, and even encouraged by people, much more than the often soulless music industry actually does.
Having said all that there is a reason that many artists avoid the experimental route; it's difficult. It takes a lot more effort to make music that makes serious attempts to break sonic boundaries, than it does to make music that although safe, is usually easily enjoyable in its simplicity. It often takes a lot of progressive steps, for even an established artist to successfully experiment with their sound and still craft an enjoyable end product (which if you don't believe me, then you merely need to look at Beyonce's discography to understand what I'm getting at). So, in the spectrum of: simple to experimental, failure to success, where exactly does Into The Vanishing Light place? Well unfortunately Into The Vanishing Light is the perfect example of an album that tries to experiment but fails to with any conviction.
The first thing you'll notice about Into The Vanishing Light is the 'lavish' production. Night Verses were clearly going for the dark ambient vibes, to the point it at sometimes feels way too on the nose, especially on tracks such as "A Dialogue In Cataplexy". With the help of 'fuzzy' sounding distorted guitar tones, and even softer tracks such as "Drift", Night Verses certainly lay down the foundation of the overall sound they are trying to achieve. However the album as a whole fails to truly build off this, as it only manages to come across as cluttered, with layers added merely in my opinion to try and appear to the listener as if there is much more going on, and much more thought to it, than there actually is. Into The Vanishing Light is drowning in its ambiance, to the point that the actual instrumentation begins to get lost in the mix. The drums for example, the majority of the time lacks the hard hitting clarity, which in such a layered album is needed, as the driving force and direction of the songs..... creating a sound that almost makes it sound as if the drums were produced, by playing along with the rest of the mix with one of those cheap, plastic drum kits that you would use to play guitar hero, or rock band with, as you hear the audible ‘tap’ merely in the background.
Now in my opinion to truly create a dark ambiance, it is important that any lyrics fit this vibe perfectly, as any contrast would be totally disengaging. Well on Into The Vanishing Light, I can only describe the lyrical content as.... well.... laughable. There are a lot of pretentious political albums out there in which the artists in question try to act as if they actually have something to say, but Into The Vanishing Light reaches never before seen lows for this. The lyrics of Into The Vanishing Light consist of nothing but half ideas that in the spectrum of politically minded albums, are so general, and so under developed, so lacking of actual substance, they are simply hollow: lacking any real soul or personality. Some of you might be thinking that I might be exaggerating a little, well let's list of the under developed themes presented on Into The Vanishing Light: the words 'truth' and 'true' appear on 5 tracks; the words 'heart(s)' and 'mind(s)' appear on 7 tracks; reference to the universe appear on pretty much all the tracks; then there are also the totally original metaphors in relation to fires and burning, and of course a 'I hear the sound of a revolution' for good measure on the track "Connecting Hexes".
Now if all of this was done to create and build upon news ideas, and new sounds, then Into The Vanishing Light would indeed have the potential to be a monumental album, but instead that isn't the point for Night Verses. Into The Vanishing Light is nothing but show; from its trying to be edgy video accompaniments to its singles, to its needlessly long song titles, and of course the unnecessarily long song lengths, which as they fumble along both instrumentally and lyrically do very little, if nothing to justify said lengths (the title track "Phoenix III: Into The Vanishing Light" at over 10 minutes in length is especially guilty of this, resulting in what must surely be the most unsatisfying conclusion to an album in 2016 so far). Into The Vanishing Light tries to barrage the listener with quantity instead of working on producing quality, trying to overwhelm the senses with little to no sophistication, and for this we can only hope that it soon vanishes from our memories.
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Album Rating: 4.5
(1/2) Review was well-written for the most part. There's a typo in the last paragraph. Also I would suggest, in the future, after bringing up a viewpoint in the beginning like you did, maybe reference it again in a closing paragraph...feels kind of disjointed as it is now.
However, I entirely disagree with your rhetoric.
First of all, I really don't think you have any idea what a "1" is. That's the lowest rating on the scale (barring .5s), so this album you're talking about better be the most putrid, unenjoyable, ear-wrenching failure you've ever heard. And if you do really think the album is that, I don't really think you got that across in your review. Feels like a 2-2.5 review to me. Especially considering you don't really touch on the instrumental composition of the album - only the atmospheric - which would have to be truly atrocious to constitute giving a 1, in my opinion.
You often say that the album feels overly "sophisticated", when, instrumentally, there are tons of more open, less complex parts than can be found on LYE. Drift or Strange Graves for example. But the restraint shown be these great musicians can be found throughout many of the heavier tracks as well, such as the brief snare drum interlude just before the rests in The Future as History.
| | | Album Rating: 4.5
(2/2) Moving on, the lyrics aren't really that hard to understand or interpret. Some of them may be ambiguous, but you can sense a consistent idea that you can draw conclusions from, which in my opinion marks good writing overall. Take Strange Graves for instance:
"There's a mirror filled with sand (imagery of an hourglass, may imply that the speaker is worried about the passage of time)
Broken glass has gone and swallowed the shore (the hourglass, and maybe the speaker's aforementioned stress is now broken)
Through the cracks I can finally sense sunlight (with this, they feel a bit happier)
Time after time I felt the sorrows deafening my world (references time to go along with the hourglass imagery)
Afraid I couldn't change
now, I want out (The speaker worried they couldn't change themselves for the better for a long time, but now that they have they want to experience life)
I'm breathing fire (they feel energetic, renewed)
I want to glisten "
Whether or not you agree with my interpretation is one thing, but, the fact that they were cohesive enough for me to draw conclusions from - and that that cohesiveness can be found throughout the record - completely invalidates your claim that the lyrics are "laughable" and made of "half ideas" IMO.
Also I think the "long song titles" complaint is just a product of someone having a chip on their shoulder...I mean what are you even talking about? The song titles are simply not very long when compared to the majority of albums.
| | | Album Rating: 4.0
Does an album with only a 3.7 average deserve a review this fuckin contrarian
| | | Album Rating: 1.0
@decisions, I think the main issue you're having with my review comes down to mindset. Just from looking at your rating I see that you tend to give a lot of albums 5s, 4.5s, 4s etc. whilst I personally wouldn't rate that many albums that highly, so a 2 on your scale per say, would equate to a 1 on mine. Also I'll admit I wasn't in the best of moods when I wrote this so yeah the song title idea was probably me having a 'chip on my shoulder', but I stick by my view of the lyrics, as the words that I mentioned (truth, mind etc.) are not only used commonly within this album, but are used commonly in general and why I find this 'laughable' is because I see both a lack of originality and too much of an attempt to sound relatable and intellectual and emotionally engaging with the listener when these ideas aren't ones that I feel came from them but are just stuff they heard before and adopted without further developing. As for not going that much into the instrumentation, the tips said to not write a long review and as my main quarrels weren't with that aspect of the album so I didn't dedicate that much of the review to it...... Having said all that I appreciate your criticisms, I'll definitely be writing another draft of this which you can expect to be submitted in the next day or 2 (I'll probably try and write it when I'm in a better mindset).
| | | Album Rating: 1.0
@wwf also isn't the point of music discussion, reviews and basically this entire website, is that people can all hear the same piece of music and yet hear it completely differently..... Like if we all just agreed on the same rating for everything, wouldn't reviews sort of be obsolete as no one would have to justify their view they would just have to say that it was good, bad etc. and that would be all anyone would have to say.
| | | Album Rating: 4.5 | Sound Off
great fucking album
| | | Album Rating: 4.5 | Sound Off
"It often takes a lot of progressive steps, for even an established artist to successfully experiment with their sound and still craft an enjoyable end product (which if you don't believe me, then you merely need to look at Beyonce's discography to understand what I'm getting at)"
i have no idea what you're getting at
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first two paragraphs are cringeworthy pretentious. 'the soulless music industry'
read a bit past that, why are you talking about dark ambient? have a neg
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posd, good review
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this user is quite the complex character
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Pos'd because you're absolutely right about this garbage
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okay, this review ain't the flashest, but i mean, it's a solid af first attempt...
def work on your tone/voice tho. a lot of this comes across as either condescending and douchey, but you're writing ain't so bad.
have a poooooos.
| | | Album Rating: 1.0
I like how I agreed that I definitely needed to rework this as I didn't put in the time to make it good..... But it's on here now so there goes that idea. I'll probably just look back at this in a year and laugh.
| | | Album Rating: 4.0
I know we all have different ears but wow a 1? All your gripes about the album(shallow lyrics, production, trying to be edgy with their singles), are minor and don't seem to warrant a 1 rating. The musicianship on this is executed quite well and the layering isn't overdone at all.
However, I do agree that this album is a hot mess with unfinished ideas. They could have expanded on their experimental ideas more to create stronger songs on their own, but the album as a whole seems complete and flows very well.
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seems like they tried too hard to top lift your existence and missed the mark
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I feel like this is the equivalent of a 5 fanboy review but on the opposite extreme. Your tone comes off as very smug and as others have said I think a 1 is unwarranted based on your reasons for disliking the album, but I think if you worked on those issues you could write a strong review for sure.
| | | Album Rating: 4.5 | Sound Off
"Some of you might be thinking that I might be exaggerating a little, well let's list of the under developed themes presented on Into The Vanishing Light: the words 'truth' and 'true' appear on 5 tracks; the words 'heart(s)' and 'mind(s)' appear on 7 tracks; reference to the universe appear on pretty much all the tracks; then there are also the totally original metaphors in relation to fires and burning, and of course a 'I hear the sound of a revolution' for good measure on the track "Connecting Hexes"."
this is one sentence
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as far as i can tell that sentence is fine
| | | Album Rating: 4.0
there's a typo and it could be written better but it's not really a run-on. there's even a ';'
| | | Album Rating: 4.5 | Sound Off
there's like the framework of a good review in here, but it never quite gets there
"With the help of 'fuzzy' sounding distorted guitar tones, and even softer tracks such as "Drift", Night Verses certainly lay down the foundation of the overall sound they are trying to achieve."
good!
"However the album as a whole fails to truly build off this, as it only manages to come across as cluttered, with layers added merely in my opinion to try and appear to the listener as if there is much more going on, and much more thought to it, than there actually is."
....not good! never say "in my opinion" in a review, let alone drop it in the middle of a sentence
"The drums for example, the majority of the time lacks the hard hitting clarity, which in such a layered album is needed, as the driving force and direction of the songs..... creating a sound that almost makes it sound as if the drums were produced, by playing along with the rest of the mix with one of those cheap, plastic drum kits that you would use to play guitar hero, or rock band with, as you hear the audible ‘tap’ merely in the background."
were you offered a cookie every time you pressed the comma button?
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