Band:	Lie In Ruins
Album:	Floating In Timeless Streams
Style:	Death metal
Release date:	November 2020

01. Earth Shall Mourn
02. Spectral Reams Of Fornication
03. Interlude I
04. (Becoming) One With The Aether
05. Drowned
06. The Path
07. Descending Further
08. Suffocating Darkness
09. Interlude II
10. Where Mountains Sleep

Drifting along with the tide.

Death metal can be a funny genre; as restrictive as it may appear on first glance as merely a sonic arms race towards heaviness, bands like Lie In Ruins come along and remind you that all-out power is an oft overused ingredient in the genre. Hailing from Finland, Lie In Ruins release their third full-length album, Floating In Timeless Streams, which mixes classic and novel elements into their varied blend of blackened death metal, producing a sound that is rich and potent. Listeners of Floating In Timeless Streams will find themselves an album that is both powerful and atmospheric.

Tracks like "Spectral Realms Of Fornication" are where the band show off their real strengths, being able to meld a melancholic Paradise Lost-meets-black metal backdrop that not only holds your attention but also adds depth to the death metal at the forefront. Working almost like a green screen, the band are able to project an atmosphere that captures your imagination before bludgeoning you with their metallic blow.

Adding to the appeal of the album is the mix of songs like "Drowned", where the band offer up undiluted blackened death metal, alongside tracks like "The Path", which is heavily Autopsy-inspired whilst still blending in the doom element with no hitches. The crashing guitars connect well with the despairing growls that will leave you bloodied and broken by its end; these elements are a constant across the whole album, but hit hardest on the tracks that blend them together.

While none of the members excel individually, with no one moment being something you could point to and praise alone, taken as a whole the band click together like puzzle pieces and complement one another to the benefit of the listener. The buzzsaw and ethereal guitars of Kulmala and Ärling put the paint onto the canvas provided by the rhythmic backbone of Manner on the drums, while Sahari fronts this powerful grouping.

Although as mentioned before no one member stands out for their positive contribution, there is one member that could be seen as the weak link amongst the ranks. Sahari's vocals are solid but diminish in appeal with repeated listening; while they are powerful and he is a capable vocalist, he sits in the same pocket for much of the album to the detriment of the songs. While I don't expect vocal gymnastics, a bit more variation would accentuate the songs and allow the album to breathe with less constriction.

The balance between the band's atmospheric leanings and power is an unequal one when taken as a whole, with the band leaning too much on the blackened death metal that makes the album more generic and less impressive. While the out-and-out blackened death tracks are welcome to ensure you don't sit into a comfort zone and lose focus, it is songs like the closing track "Where Mountains Sleep" where the issues lie. The balance between atmosphere and power is unequal and provides a lop-sided listening experience where the song is dragged down by the weak atmospheric side of the track rather than being elevated by its inclusion or left to float on its own without its inclusion.

The other issue facing the band is that while they don't outright clone their inspirations, they don't digest them and make them their own, leaving listeners to play metal bingo and easily spot which section was inspired by which band. The two mainstay influences for much of the album are Candlemass and Celtic Frost, which is a constant for much of the tracks here. "Earth Shall Mourn" sounds like the band throw these influences into a blender and serve it up, not injecting enough of themselves into the mix.

Floating In Timeless Streams is a good effort that bursts into life when things click and the band are able to balance the components well, making for an enjoyable and powerful listen if you give it a chance.