Review Summary: A perfect album in the terms of melodic black-metal. Melodies and amtosphere is mixed with classical and death-metal influences and has black-metal as a solid platform.
You have forced yourself through a vast battered and blood-soaked battlefield, your armour has deep hacks, your shield is broken and your sword is blunt and cracked. Your body is getting heavier for every step you take. You look around and see a wasteland filled of fallen foes and friends; only the feasting ravens and crows are the ones alive in this massacre. Darkness starts to fall as the blood red sun is setting, you now standing on your knees and you scream one last time: WHY!? But what does it matter, there is no way to go now and you know that your body has suffered too much damage to carry you to safety. You know that you have made a difference but you have now to pay with your life. You fall to the ground but you don't feel anything and everything seems so light as your last breath is released from you body and a last tear slowly runs down on your face. Darkness is now complete, as silence echoes louder than words and everything is forever forgotten.
Black-metal has never been known for melodies, more like the opposite. But there are still bands that have the guts to experiment with the black-metal genre. While the black-metal veterans still release high-quality black-metal, the rest of the lesser known bands are left for themselves to discover new ways to get recognition.
Dimmu Borgir, for example, has incorporated lots of orchestral elements to create their style of black-metal and therefore they have become very successful. But once again we look around bands like
Dissection and
Noctes, who displayed a great perspective of how melodic black-metal can sound like, and since it was such an interesting sound, I had to look for another melodic black-metal band. This time I found one that was actually active and they had released more than one album.
Embraced is the name of this band, they hail from Sweden and were formed in 1993. At the first beginning the band was playing thrash-metal and with time the band broadened their sound by adding more influences from death-metal and from classical music. The final product is now a very keyboard driven and atmospheric sort of black-metal, with elements of melodic death-metal, classical ingredients and of course black-metal.
Embraced had a good flow during the beginning of their metal journey but when the recording of
Within took place
Embraced was starting to be torn apart. There were many disagreements among the band members and especially in musical ideas, but
Within was finally recorded in 2000. Shortly after the release the band broke-up but luckily they changed their minds and they reunited four years later and they are back to the drawing board, but let’s focus on this album.
Within was released in 2000 and this is definitely an album of atmosphere!
Embraced uses lots of keyboards to create classical and/or orchestral elements that enhances the songs atmospheres. Black-metal is still present though, especially in the raspy screamy vocals, although there are not so many black-metal ingredients among the instrumental performances. There are not many blast-beats or tremolo riffs in this album, for better or for worse, but it is definitely a very easy album to get addicted to. Tracks such as
Nighttime Drama,
Sacred Tears and
Putrefaction would be the best tracks to compare with the review intro. These songs have some of the best atmospheres due to the fact that you will feel the sense of hopelessness and sorrow, not to mention they are also catchy and well-structured songs.
Sacred Tears can cause you to shed a tear, and is definitely the best track if you want sadness. Since there are many songs with different atmospheres and sound you also have songs that take on other musical approaches, as many songs are often visited by influences of melodic death-metal.
Era Of Changes comes close to an apocalyptic
Hypocrisy driven structure, and
Within Me moves on to a darker and more depressive stage with a slightly heavier structure, almost like a darker version of
In Flames.
Blessed Are Those… walks almost in the steps as the previous songs except that the drum patterns that are present on the track are both interesting and catchy.
Solitude Of My Own would be without a doubt one of the most varied tracks that displays basically every trait of this album. Both vocally and instrumentally, it is heavy, fast, dark and sad, atmospheric and melodic.
Kalle Johansson is the vocalist here, and perhaps maybe the only one that puts out the largest amount of black-metal work. His voice perfectly suits the music, as his very raspy and loud screaming adds a very desperate feel to the songs. His screams would be similar to
Peter Tagtgren's type of yell-screaming. Whispers and darker vocal work is heard on some of the songs but unfortunately it's not that often.
Peter Mardklint and
Davor Tepic are the two guitarists, and once again we are forced against the wall by some heavy hitting guitar work. I'm not sure if I can call these riffs "tremolo riffs", which are typical to the black-metal genre, but they sound very enjoyable. Heavy shredds, catchy death/thrash riffs, melodic tremolos and fast picked calm acoustics are some of the perks these guys can deliver. What about solos? Well, it's hard to tell because it seems like
Embraced are more focused on the keyboards and calm acoustics to create a massive a harmonized sound and atmosphere, but once you hear a solo you will notice that most of the solos are long and melodic, nothing too complicated or too simplistic.
Julius Chmielewski and
Sven Karlsson are the two keyboarders (yes, there are two keyboards and there is a reason). The band wanted to create a large sound during the tours but one keyboard couldn't possibly work that out, so two keyboards were added. These are without a doubt the best instrumental performance on this album, as the immense atmospheres created by the keyboards will hook you right away. These guys would be great competitors to
Children Of Bodom's keyboarder
Janne Warmann, but not in skilled finger dexterity but in the terms of atmospheric abilities.
Michael Hakansson is the bassist, and he adds more sound to the already mighty guitars and you rarely hear the bass but once you hear it you'll notice that the bass sound is still pretty thick and heavy.
Thomas Lejon is the drummer and he delivers a varied drum performance. I can't hear one single ‘’pure’’ blast-beat except perhaps on the track
The Fallen, but double bass kicking are often present. Mid-paced patterns force their way through from time to time but for the most part, there are many quite simple yet catchy, heavy and fast drum patterns.
"
Melodies you can hum to, what has that to do with black-metal?" –Blasphemer (Mayhem)
"
Man, you get the feeling of people dancing or cuddling with each other…sick! What has blackness to do with that? It is the evil, dark, unpleasant, disgusting stuff that is black-metal to me, otherwise you have lost the entire concept of black-metal." - Maniac (ex-Mayhem)
"
It is like this: We bake the bread, but then others come and bakes cake. Eventually you will get tired of cake too, so then we start to bake wholemeal bread instead." - Fenriz (Darkthrone)
These are authentic sentences from a one hour long black-metal documentary I saw a few years back when bands like
Mayhem discussed how black-metal is to them and the bands that took the music to new levels (
Dimmu Borgir).
Darkthrone also said that they used to freeze out other bands because they sucked, which is sad but true. But things have changed and black-metal has appeared in many different shapes and styles. While there are still bands that are reluctant to the fact that old-school is best, others continue to break new ground, but there are probably many bands that have accepted that black-metal can't stay locked in one certain form. Call me a fanboy or whatever you want but this album takes the cake. Black-metallish or not, it was way better than I thought. If I had to point of one single bad thing about this album then it would be that a song or two didn't grab my interest as well as another. A perfect album in every aspect if you ask me. Even the vocals worked out fine, though there was a lack of variety. Most of the songs follow a similar structure but every song still has its own character, sound and atmosphere. Some tracks are heavier, some are darker, some are faster and catchier, and more or less atmospheric; you name it, this album has it. Dark, sad and depressive but yet so beautiful, melodic and harmonic; if you happen to like any sort of melodic extreme-metal then there is a big chance that this album will strike its way to your heart. This might be one of the greatest melodic extreme-metal albums I have ever encountered and
Sacred Tears must be one of the most best written songs I have ever heard yet, and I really encourage you to find this album by any means possible. Dedicated old-school black-metal fans would not see this album as great as I do so people who are not interested in melodic might not find this so attractive.
Positive
+ A very atmospheric and melodic black-metal album
+ There is a superb flow through the whole album
+ Great and clear sound quality
+ The desperate vocals adds a lot to the music
+ Excellent musicianship
Negative
- This might not suit old-school people
- It sounds more like melodic death than black (but who cares)
- The album cover could use an extreme makeover
Recommended Tracks
-- Sacred Tears (highly recommended)
-- Nighttime Drama (highly recommended)
-- Solitude Of My Own
-- The Fallen
Yes, this album is far away from classic status but I enjoy this album from start to finish and therefore I will give this album a rare 5/5.
