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SKIES TURN BLACK Release “Lonely Valentine’s” Music Video; Broken Hearts & Bad Habits Album Due In June
#SkiesTurnBlack #LonelyValentines #BrokenHeartsAndBadHabits #SliptrickRecords #HeavyMetal #BritishBand #MusicVideo #NorthEngland #CharlesBaudelaire #DanceTune
By Angry Metal Guy
Written by: Nameless_N00b_86
One of the best ways for an unknown band to pique a potential listener’s interest is to promise an immersive story. Eldermoon, a fiery new band from Curitiba, Brazil, attempts this tactic with its debut album Egregora. The narrative is told by an omniscient entity called the Moon who watches the various stages of human existence—encapsulated in each of the 10 tracks—without interference or judgment.1 The band was even committed enough to write detailed track-by-track summaries of each chapter as part of the promo materials. However, any album that tells a story must also offer quality music if it wants repeat listens. Does Egregora deliver, or did the allure of a concept album mislead me?
Despite having no veteran experience, the members of Eldermoon bring plenty of energy and creativity to their brand of melodeath. Much like Soilwork in recent years, this style relies heavily on choruses, leaving room for fast, catchy riffwork. All of the songs feature guitar solos by Allan Estalk and Alan Sanglard, which are easily the album’s highlights. The blistering guitar solo in the title track particularly showcases their proficiency. This isn’t to say that they are the only skillful instrumentalists—Fabio Conelli’s bass and Lucas Lorenzetti’s drums deftly keep pace with the ever-changing musical tempos. All of them, working in tandem, help drive the music forward.
The vocals present the most glaring inconsistency on Egregora. Alex Biembengut has roughly an octave in the baritone range where he sounds comfortable. Though this is less than ideal,2 the main problem is that he spends a lot of time outside the scope of his singing ability. His voice becomes strained and off-key when he tries to stretch his range upwards, like in the chorus of “Wake of a New Cycle.” When he sings too low, it becomes raspy and even croaks in the intro of “Egregora.” Nowhere are these limitations more evident than on “Priestess of the Moon.” As a ballad, there isn’t much to pull the focus off the vocals. Furthermore, as a duet with pitch-perfect guest vocalist Raíssa Ramos, the song highlights Biembengut’s shortcomings. On the other hand, Biembengut’s rasps and growls are serviceable. In future endeavors, Eldermoon would be better off letting the guitars carry most of the melody and using Biembengut’s growls and screams as a rhythm instrument and accentuation. While laudable in theory, the band’s choice to prioritize vocal variety diminishes Egregora’s quality.
The vocal woes are especially regrettable because the songwriting on Egregora hits more often than it misses. The chorus of opener “The Elder” is tight and catchy, with a smooth key change in its final appearance. “Timor Incogniti” establishes an epic, dramatic atmosphere through the use of choirs without overdoing it. There are a few big whiffs—”Tomorrow in Oblivion” and “Wake of a New Cycle” are both marred by choruses that sound like week-old Five Finger Death Punch—but overall, Eldermoon knows how to write engaging songs with a distinct character. I hope that in the future they home in on the elements that work best and explore them more thoroughly.
Egregora aims high but falls short of bringing its expansive story to life. There is some compelling material that may appeal to those who can forgive the vocal imperfections, with “Timor Incogniti,” “Gears in Motion,” and “Give Me More!” representing the most consistent stretch. I suspect, though, that the singing will irreparably injure many listeners’ impressions of the record. Still, Eldermoon’s earnestness and talent are hard to ignore. If they can shore up or sidestep their weak points, they have the potential to make their sophomore venture worthy of note.
Rating: 2.5/5.0
DR: 5 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Sliptrick Records
Websites: eldermoonband.com | facebook.com/EldermoonBand
Releases Worldwide: July 30th, 2024
#25 #2024 #BrazilianMetal #DeathMetal #Egregora #Eldermoon #FiveFingerDeathPunch #Jul24 #MelodicDeathMetal #Review #Reviews #SliptrickRecords #Soilwork
Final Coil – The World We Inherited Review
By Iceberg
The U.K.’s Final Coil have once, twice graced these halls under the watchful gaze of our benevolent taskmaster Steel. But his eyes are all denim and leather these days, leaving me to find the band’s latest The World We Inherited languishing in the Dry January promo sump. Blending post and prog metal with a healthy dose of grunge, it’s been four years since they dropped their last LP, The World We Left Behind for Others. Unsurprisingly this 2024 release is connected to its predecessors, the third and final piece in the band’s “Persistence” triptych. Concept-driven albums are natural draws for this reviewer, an excellent choice for ushering in the new year. Alas, December ended poorly for the House of Ice and Berg, and we’re starting 2024 extra crotchety and itching to swing the pan-hammer. Can Final Coil deliver the goods to melt this frozen, pelagic heart?
Final Coil’s sound remains heavily influenced by 90’s and 00’s alt-rock with touches of Pink Floyd and Tool. The guitars alternate between stank-face grunge riffs (“Wires,” “Chemtrails”) and ethereal post-metal textures (“The Growing Shadows,” “End of History). Jola Stiles’ menacing bass lines are supported by a low-end rich mix, as are Barry French’s tasteful backbeats and tom patterns, the latter of which remind me of Sermon’s last outing (“Wires,” “The Growing Shadows”). Phil Stiles’ vocal performance is more varied than previous records, oscillating between a rasping monotone à la Rammstein (“The World We Inherited,” “Humanity”) and a mournful post-grunge baritone (“Chemtrails,” “End of History”). The newest member of the band comes in the form of darkwave synths, often driving entire songs and creating a stark contrast to the guitar-driven tracks (“By Starlight,” “Stay With Me”).
TWWI’s opening three-song salvo wastes no time in showcasing Final Coil’s strengths. “The World We Inherited” is an excellent example of the band’s maturing sensibilities, taking the right amount of time to add slithering chromatic melodies and panned chugs to a piano line plucked from their previous album. By the time the full band arrives the listener is fully immersed in Final Coil’s dystopian soundscape, a textbook example of crafting an opening track with intention. “Wires” contains one of the album’s catchiest choruses and “Chemtrails” features headbangable riffs and leads doing battle with a growling, growing morass of synth waves. There’s an immediacy to the fury exhibited on these three tracks, with the band covering relatively little runtime—11 minutes or so—and wisely refraining from the meandering so common to both post and prog acts.
But album construction is just as important as song construction, and the U-shaped flow of TWWI makes for a tricky listen on the first pass. The middle tracks (4-8) only make up about half of the album’s runtime, but because they spend nearly all of it languishing in the shadowy atmospheric world of post-metal, they feel a good deal longer than that. The immediacy of the opening gives way to a sense of wandering, and the band hang on patterns a little too long. The lack of burly guitar riffs—“Out of Sorts” being an exception—in this stretch is made all the more glaring by the embarrassment of riches that came before. Make no mistake, these songs are still well crafted, from the lonely darkwave of “Stay With Me” to the theatrical Pink Floyd turn on “Purify.” The band manage to reclaim their sharpened edge on late album banger “Humanity” and close the curtain on their concept with the cascading doom of “End of History,” but one can’t help but feel some editing at the center of the record would have resulted in a better product. It’s not so much the quality of the content on TWWI, but the way it’s pieced together that keeps it from it’s true potential.
Structural nit-picks aside, The World We Inherited is an album that grew on me the more I spent time with it. The band have come a long way from the safety of post-grunge in Persistence of Memory, and they command an impressive toolbox of styles and a keen sense of performance. Construction, especially big-picture construction, seems to be the biggest hurdle here. But it’s the pervasive atmosphere and elusive, effective riffs that’s kept me coming back for more. Perhaps now, with their “Persistence” trilogy at a close, Final Coil can approach their next effort as a new means to escape the 3.0 Tree and reach heights unseen.
Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 8 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Sliptrick| Bandcamp
Websites: finalcoil.com | facebook.com | Bandcamp
Releases Worldwide: January 16th, 2024
#2024 #30 #AltRock #FinalCoil #Grunge #Jan24 #PinkFloyd #PostGrunge #PostMetal #ProgMetal #Rammstein #Review #Reviews #Sermon #SliptrickRecords #TheWorldWeInherited #Tool #UK_
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Angry Metal Guy
