Band:	Barren Earth
Album:	Our Twilight
Style:	Melodic death metal, Progressive metal
Release date:	November 09, 2009
A review by:	Jeff

01. Our Twilight
02. Jewel
03. Flame Of Serenity
04. Floodred

Take some famous or least confirmed Finnish musicians, mix all their musical influences, shake a bit and what do you get? Barren Earth of course! Last signature of the cult British label Peaceville, this new "dream team" from the north should attract all the ones who use to listen to Dark Progressive Metal. A bit like Opeth but with some Doom Death Metal influences too and some melodies a la Amorphis this new project release its first EP, Our Twilight, this year and obviously it features good promising things!

The first Barren Earth album should be released later this year or even at the beginning of 2010 but Our Twilight is a good way to discover the band to quickly understand in front of what we are. Barren Earth play extreme but really melodic Metal. Between Death, melodic Doom Death and Progressive, the music on Our Twilight is not bad at all. Obviously Opeth and Amorphis (two of Barren Earth members played with the last one) are the main influences but Mikko Kotamäki, vocalist of Swallow The Sund probably added his point of view in term of melodies. The result is dark with strong loud riffs but always with some really catchy melodies. I like the alternation between clean and Death vocals and the little 70's spirit that we can find on a song like "Jewel" which is a perfect melting pot of all the genres that I gave earlier in this review. It works, it simply works and even if it's not the darkest and most aggressive music that I heard lately and even if obviously this is something a bit "mainstream" I'm quite sure that Barren Earth will get high reviews.

The recording and the whole EP are classy but it's a trade mark with Peaceville anyway and when the time to talk about the musicians comes, I just have to add that you shouldn't be disappointed too. After all, all these guys are real professional and confirmed musicians and if a guy like Sami Yli-Sirniö choose to play in another band than Kreator or [band]Waltari[band] there are no doubts that it's not for a cheesy new combo. All the instruments have an importance here and the keyboards lines are interesting and give a nice Prog Metal but also Neo Prog side to the music. The songs of Our Twilight have real guitars solos, this is a band which plays real complex music which is not linear and, you could see it, which is varied. This is already enough promising for the first album!

There can have two point of views when it comes to judge Barren Earth. If you're an "extreme" fan of extreme Metal, I'm not sure that you'll like their music which is too "cool" and melodic, but if you like Progressive Death Metal and melodic Doom Death, I'm ready to bet a lot of money on those guys, this album will be for you. Four songs is not enough to give a final judgment on this band though but if all the other new songs follow the way of those ones, then I can already predict a lot of success to Barren Earth. Remember my words ok? Because you'll hear a lot about this band in 2010.