Band:	Dark Embrace
Album:	Bitter End
Style:	Gothic doom metal
Release date:	2003
A review by:	Malcolm

01. Dying Breath (Intro)
02. Bitter End
03. The Threat Of Flesh And Its Libidinous Storms Of Silence
04. Fragility Of Life

Next band in my quest of reviewing young and unsigned Doom bands hails from Spain, where dragon-slaying Power Metal rules the day.
But Dark Embrace shows us that some things maybe are about to change even there.
This trio's Doom is in the school of Gothic/Doom, it's more melancholic, with other words.

"Bitter End" is their first Demo; they released a rehearsal tape in 2001, and this in 2003, and a new promo-cd in August this year. So for being unsigned, the band got experience, not many bands has over 2 years behind them when releasing their first demo.

As mention, Dark Embrace's Doom is in a school of Gothic, it's melancholic and beautiful. The music lies somewhere around mid-tempo, maybe a bit faster, and the vocals are all handle by Oscar, so don't fool yourself and think just because there's a woman in the band, it's going to be female vocals, because that's not the case here.
Oscar does all vocals, both cleaner and the "grunts".

Musically it's sad, of course, and much keyboards are used, with I think only strengthen the present of Gothic.
And one main-influence I think this band has is Moonspell, I know many of you don't consider them as Doom, and maybe you're right, but if you listen to the second song (third, first is a Intro) and you'll hear some similarities with the mention Portuguese band.

The album rips of with an intro, a 1-minute long keyboard anthem that's nothing special, it's just there to get you in the right mood for the next song, the first one.
"Bitter End", the title track is following, it's a beautiful hymn, with many touches of melancholic, Oscar gives us both clean vocals and some crow-grunts here, and the song in general is the best the demo has to offer.

Second up, "The Threat of Flesh And its Libidinous Storms of Silence" is the song that I found some similarities with Moonspell, but it's just the beginning of the song, the rest I quite original, if you ask me. I know, the song-name is very original to, it have to be the longest song-name I ever written in a review.

The last track, "Fragility of Life", is a quite short one (the first two was both over 7minutes long), it's almost 3 minutes short, and it's the song that I think got the most Gothic feeling.
It's not ever that heavy, its more melancholy and beautiful, the guitar are quite visible here, together with Oscars very special clean voice.

So to conclude it all I have to say that Spain got a future even in Doom, even if I know that many fans of Death/Doom maybe won't like this, because of it's major gothic influenced, but all fans of Romantic Doom should check this band up.

Check Out: "Bitter End" my personal favourite.