Eye Of Solitude - Cenotaph review
Band: | Eye Of Solitude |
Album: | Cenotaph |
Style: | Funeral doom metal |
Release date: | September 01, 2016 |
A review by: | ScreamingSteelUS |
01. Cenotaph
02. A Somber Guest
03. This Goodbye. The Goodbye
04. Loss
You like being miserable? Then get the heck on over here, you miserable sack of misery. It's groveling time.
Comprising only four songs between 10 and 16 minutes in length, Cenotaph is fairly lean for an Eye Of Solitude album, but it is no less intense than what the band has been known to deliver in the past. There are very few bands in this world that can so perfectly capture the pure, unfiltered sound of utter, abject despair as Eye Of Solitude. How does Eye Of Solitude achieve such a level of emotional energy? The songs move at an agonizing pace, taking evident pains to wring lasting echoes out of every last note. Each movement strains the musicians, accentuating the crushing heaviness with the groans of some ancient, unfathomable misery.
Occasionally, the songs escape the cruel taskmaster of percussion, which forces the band to trudge forward wearily. "A Somber Guest" opens with a quiet, but by no means calm, mixture of guitar leads and ambient keyboards; inevitably, however, it crescendos into a volcanic mass of sounds that fills the air and still leaves the listener hollow. Cenotaph has an impeccably constructed atmosphere that overflows with depression. Sparse melodies take dark turns at every opportunity, on those rare occasions when the songs break free of endless cycles of drudgery and actually bother with whims like melodies. The enormous void of Cenotaph threatens to engulf the listener. Musically, the album is very simplistic, utilizing only a bare minimum of sonic interference most of the time, but the sheer voluminous presence of the band creates enormous weight behind every touch of sound.
"This Goodbye, The Goodbye" is easily one of the best songs Eye Of Solitude has ever produced. The piano interlude in the middle practically induces the song itself to shed tears, and Daniel Neagoe's wails of grief pierce all barriers of the heart with their tones of pure grief and anguish. Neagoe's deep, wrenching gutturals typically sound more like the howling wind than a human singing. Protracted screams tear from his throat and slowly fade into the fabric of purgatorial doom, leaving scars and blisters wherever they appear. His clean vocals, too, sound more like mournful chants or a man reading his own suicide note than someone singing a song. There is no space for normal conventions of music here. This is funeral doom: ugly, inexorable, creeping, terrifying, awe-inspiring, monumental, unending funeral doom. The wretched funeralia with which Cenotaph opens could soundtrack the first cold sunrise on a field of slaughter or a landscape wracked by famine and pestilence. It takes only a moment to recognize the genius of Cenotaph, but to experience it takes an eternity; this album will not soon leave your memory.
Rating breakdown
Performance: | 10 |
Songwriting: | 9 |
Originality: | 7 |
Production: | 8 |
| Written on 13.01.2017 by I'm the reviewer, and that means my opinion is correct. |
Comments
Comments: 6
Visited by: 316 users
RaduP CertifiedHipster Staff |
LuciferOfGayness Account deleted |
Bad English Tage Westerlund |
Cynic Metalhead Ambrish Saxena |
Marcel Hubregtse Grumpy Old Fuck Elite |
Bad English Tage Westerlund |
Hits total: 7835 | This month: 3