Review Summary: Antigone's debut album "Crise Blanche" shows a promising start.
Crise Blanche is the debut album of Antigone, a trio from El Paso, Texas. The album features interesting soundscapes all around, seeming to draw inspiration from mostly progressive metal and rock. Though released in 2008, it has yet to receive a review, better late than never I suppose. In
Crise Blanche, Antigone manages to record an album which doesn’t bore or over indulge. Overall the album is an interesting listen that is well worth the time spent.
The guitars and drums in
Crise Blanche stand out and work together wonderfully to create tracks ranging from great to excellent. The vocals on the record work well but don’t jump out quite as well as the other aspects present. Each instrument has various portions in which it stands out in the album. For example the most grabbing vocals on the album can be found in
The Trigger, the drumming at the beginning of
Renunciation can best be described as entrancing,
Discomfit features some of the most beautiful guitar work on the record, and through all of that my favorite track on the record is
Man of Prey as it seems to be the most consistent track. Another interesting track yet to be mentioned however is
Motive, which is the only instrumental track on the album. It is also the shortest at three minutes in length. While those are simply the stand out moments in the album for myself, for the most part Antigone does a good job of keeping the album at a consistent, excellent quality throughout.
There are only a couple of small complaints I have about this album. One is that it is rather short. Clocking in at just over thirty-six minutes it feels like it ends way too soon. The album contains only six tracks as five of them are either right at six minutes or longer. Perhaps the weakest track on the album is
Revivication. While not bad, it just doesn’t grab me quite like the others. In any case these are minor complaints that don’t take away too much from the listening experience. If anything the short run time allows you to quickly listen to something if you don’t have time for a longer, more arduous album.
Antigone may not bring anything groundbreaking or entirely new to the table with
Crise Blanche, but what they do accomplish is creating something pleasant and interesting to listen to. This is an excellent album that seems to have flown under the radar. Antigone have been able to create quite a wonderful album in their debut. I am looking forward to see what the future has in store for them. With some tweaking and more content Antigone may have a bright future in front of them.
