"All Hail to the Netherworld": shouted vocals with tremolo picking: black metal Agnostic Front... now slowing down, sounds a bit NWOBHM almost with New Wave guitar strumming... now Celtic Frost riffing to close it out...? Nope. Starting to get too long... know when to end the song/piece, guys... sound's not evolving, really, just repeating... the refrain's not your friend if the melody's not that interesting...!
"Les Innocents:" a long time with a flatted fifth... it's Swans meets Black Sabbath, but not quite as cool as that sounds... like most doom bands, they don't know when to end... this spoken word over bass thing you're doing was cool for approximately five to ten seconds, just enough to say what you need to say... now you're just belaboring it... at 3:31 it's worn out it's welcome-- get to it, you're pissing me off... lots of reverbed whispering. Big NO on this track.
"Coffins and Cloven Hooves": opens with mid-paced alt-pop strumming, but with radically-detuned riffs (in B). Very cool so far. Becomes New Wave-ish again with a chorus... almost Sisters Of Mercy-ish, and overall cool and funky... a bit of Isis here... overall, it grows on you. I'm humming this one. Favorite so far.
"Arcane Delve": opens boring, then at about 1:32 and its refrain of "Like a Lord of Flies" like a very cool heavier Depeche Mode, or KMFDM or Swans. At 4:30 we get a middle-eastern riff version of Kirk Hammett's solos and a Morne-ful melody that actually quite moving, in the same way Chopin's Funeral Marche is....
"Canto IV": we start with lush strings, not unlike a 12-string, or a simple harp melody in Db minor that resolves to major and then becomes--
"Veils" with a monolithic riff, funeral progression, drums plod, but not in the good way... sounds like a drummer who's never quite found the pocket (and no, I don't care that this is, at this point, funeral doom-- you can still rub stank on it, à la Centurions Ghost)... overall forgettable....
"To Carry The Lantern": opens with toms and minor 9th chords (I think)... and doesn't particularly change over its nearly seven-minute running time....
"Illumination in Omega," while sounding cool in title, is really just a pop-punk, Ramones-y, Type O Negative castoff.... "Horns" and closer "In the Devil's Days," well, close things out.
Overall: not at all what I thought I was getting into: in its best moments, much more like the early-80s pop version of Ghost and Opus Eponymous....
...Sounds kinda cool, though, doesn't it? When it does in fact hit that mark-- very cool stuff.
--Horn
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Marko P // HOC