Review Summary: While the album is far from being bad, it as a whole lacks reason to remember it beyond the first few listens.
By the time I heard the Swedish outfit’s debut, I had already become fairly familiar with their work through the most recent release “A Rose for the Apocalypse” and the borderline classice status release “Arcane Rain Fell” so I went into the debut “Where Lovers Mourn” as one of the later releases I took a listen to and, as I said, it had to grow on me. But after a good four or five plays, I’ve developed a modest liking for the release, but still I can’t help but feel the imperfections that are very present throughout.
But no album is perfect, especially debuts, so it is forgivable.
So back in the band’s early days (demo period) the sound could be listed as black metal influenced melodic death metal. With the release of “Where Lovers Mourn” the band went for a more straightforward death/doom metal approach with the black metal and gothic influence being a more backburner thing and very much less apparent.
Sound wise, it’s a heavy and thick mix of the violence of death metal and with the depression and slow speed of doom metal peppered with black metal influence (mostly in the guitar work) and a gothic touch of symphonic metal. Very heavily down-tuned guitars, paired with some subtle bass work to thicken the sound and slow yet strong drums layered with some sparcely used but very much involved keyboards that ad a lot to the atmosphere of the album, and of course the vocals, with some nice throaty death growls, more black metal influenced mid range howling and some spoken word passages for good measure all done by Anders Jacobson. But it’s female vocalist Lisa Johansson who sticks out the most in the vocal department. Her range is borderline operatic and vaguely melancholic. She gives a good deal of contrast and beauty to play off of Anders vocals very well. She’s really what gives the band that small touch of character that separates them from the rest of the pack of the genre.
The whole band performs very well and everything sounds very tight and well produced. This is especially present on the first track “The Cry of Silence” a very slow and very heavy tale of a misanthropic man who wishes to live his life and die in solitude away from anyone and everyone else in the world. It’s probably the best effort for the doom aspect on the album (an aspect both good and bad in retrospect considering that it starts at its best and goes downhill from this point) as well as the longest, yet not long winded and offers a good amount of variety with a few mid tempo parts to break up the sound so that the twelve and a half minute piece doesn’t overstay it’s welcome. Next we have “Silent Winter” which goes to the other side of the scale and comes to us as the best effort for the faster, gothic and symphonic influence to show itself.
Unfortunately, as I said, the album goes a bit downhill from here. The best has been displayed for the first two songs and the rest of the record is a mixed bag filled with a lot of good ideas and just as many misfires. For starters, let’s address the main issue with this record; there’s nothing wrong with the performance or production. Both aspects sound great. No, the problems stem from the very song writing itself. See the thing about most of the songs here is that half of them are remakes that appeared here and there across the five demos they released over the past ten tears. The demo period in which they suffered from things like poor and lazy song structure, repetitive writing and a disinterested vibe plaguing the whole thing.
The only songs here that are originals to the album are “Silent Winter”, “A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal”, “Reversio Ad Secessum” and “Akherousia”. The rest are all remakes and while some songs have actually been improved by being remade (and by some I mean just “The Cry of Silence”) the rest suffer from the most of the same problems that came with them on the demos, just with tighter production. They’re not entirely bad though, “The Solitude”, “The Amaranth” and “It Grieves My Heart” are decent enough, probably the best songs out of the demos that, once again, were less than great, they’re entertaining to listen to and greatly preformed, they lack any real reason to go back to or remember or in any way shape or form care about. Songs that are good to listen to but you don’t care all too much past the first enjoyable listens. Then you have the original songs that I listed earlier which, save for “Silent Winter”, are all complete filler tracks. “A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal” is the third track on the album, starting off pretty uninspired, staying that course for the next five minutes and ends before you know it. Completely un-impacted. Then comes “Reversio Ad Secessum” which is probably the most memorable of the trio (though that’s not saying much) with some interesting piano sections and nice vocal work by Lisa, but overall, nothing noteworthy. Then you “Akherousia” which is most guilty of this, a very brief (only two and a half minutes) piece that is the only ballad and the only one with Lisa doing all the vocals. It’s the most bored and uninterested song on the entire release and one to skip entirely, which is a real shame considering it could have been a good display of Lisa’s voice but ended up being wasted potential.
So in closing, the album as a whole, is decent. It’s not a bad release, but it has a great deal of flaws, enough so that I can’t say it’s a must listen. It’s worth a listen or two, but doesn’t go much past that. Besides that band would go on to garner a good deal of success with their 2005 follow up “Arcane Rain Fell” so it’s not that surprising that this release has been more or less forgotten about by both fans and the band themselves.
