Band:	Celestial Crown
Album:	The Embraced
Style:	Black metal, Gothic doom metal
Release date:	2002
A review by:	Undercraft

01. With The Autumn Winds
02. Dreams Of Elizabeth
03. The Embraced
04. Your Touch
05. Nocturnal Insanity
06. Dark Dance
07. From Dance To Fall
08. Return To The Haunted Shores
09. Epitaph In Two Parts

Time to review an album that passed by and no one noticed, I'm talking about Estonian act Celestial Crown and their 2002 release "The Embraced". They describe their music as Atmospheric Doom Black Metal, and they're not far from the truth. While until unpolished in some parts, I sense the band have something in here.

Basically the band plays mournful music with aggressive vocals and some operatic female vocals. Musically, the band relies a lot in the keyboards. Atmospheric, almost dreamy interludes with spoken passages can be found all through the album, too many for my tastes, because they tend to become boring.

Songs are lengthy, with interludes and aggressive breaks, if I had to pick some they would be "Dreams Of Elizabeth", a good opener for the album, "Dark Dance" is also good, but my personal favorite is "Return To The Haunted Shores", I just love the way it starts, melancholic, very paced, and then slowly builds up and reaches its peak with a great duet between the shrieks and the female vocals.

The album also features a wonderful cover art, and to be honest with you, it was the first thing that attracted me of the band, just take a look for yourself, tragic and emotive is the way I describe it.
Sadly, the band didn't put as much effort on the sound production as for the art direction. The production leaves you completely unsatisfied, the guitars, vocals and bass lines sounds quite opaque in the mix, and the overall mix is not crystal clear and that really brings the whole experience down.

Yes, the band have some ideas, but they need to develop more their sound, I found too much filler time between spoken passages and long keyboard interludes, at first is alright I think, but it gets old very quickly, at the third spin I was through with those long keyboard parts.

Although released in 2002, the album has an actual sound that many bands are doing now, so we could consider this a pioneer in the Doom-Black scene. Good album, some noticeable flaws, but still, a good effort.