Band:	Bjarm
Album:	Imminence
Style:	Black metal
Release date:	February 18, 2014
A review by:	Doc G.

01. Approaching Of The Close
02. Knowledge Of Doom
03. Ominous Dreams
04. The Nine Worlds
05. Fire Lord's Torment
06. Imminence
07. Oracle
08. Secret Of The Immortals
09. The Highest Hall
10. Tree On The Bones

"Fuck it. Synths." - Bjarm's Imminence in a nutshell.

Seriously guys, go back and re-do this. Bjarm sound like a band more interested in an overall aura of a sound, and the idea of having an album out than...you know...all the important bits in the middle, like, say for example - writing an entire album.

What Bjarm have managed to do here is write roughly an EP worth of lackadaisical melodic black metal material, then watered the whole thing down in cheap sounding synths. This painfully obvious attempt at stretching songs out makes Imminence a bit of a deceitful listen. Aside from the horrendous "symphonic" instrumental intro, things actually kick off pretty nicely. It really, truly sounds convincingly epic, aggressive and ambitious for the first few tracks. By the 3rd track, it starts to feel like you (finally) got invited to a party, only to realize you got duped into an insurance company's focus group, but you've already eaten the complimentary taco chips so you have no choice but to see things through to the painful end. Frequent instrumental breaks extend far too long for comfort, the sloppy harsh vocals sound goofy and the big, epic synths coupled with the full production just makes the whole package feel claustrophobic and busy.

This is the same experience as hearing Ex Deo's Romulus for the first time; if given snippets and small samples, it sounds promising. The whole package is tedious, watered down and more than just a little boring. Half the songs on the album clock in at over 5 minutes, 2 of the remaining tracks are meandering instrumentals, one of which is the obligatory intro track. Is there an acceptable amount of filler on any given album? The answer to that is irrelevant, because Bjarm easily clear that bar, where ever you choose to set it.

Essentially, Imminence has roughly 20 minutes of legitimately solid material ... watered down, ironed, stretched, thinned, racked and synth'd into a painful 50.