Pulling out strong with their gothic oriented metal release 'Night Eternal', combining mostly heavy guitar sounds, aggressive drumming, vampire laden vocals, intense drumming and aura filled atmospheric synthesizers to augment the musical finesse. I liked this album from start to finish. To me the guitar, vocals and drumming brought me more into this then the synthesizers, but they made the mood of this album dark totally. One helluva good release, intense and original. The guitar melodies are what captivated me the most. A lot of experimentation in the sounds of the album to get its' essence more than just another gothic metal output. They dug deep in creativity here. Way deeply composed!

The album's heaviness has to lie in the guitar riffs and drumming, plus the vocals are also very harsh as well as intensified. Not every song was just sounding the same, but its' brutality is featured throughout. Guitars are doing a series of things here, tremolo picking galore, some clean tone melodies, bar chords and some lead guitar, just a limited amount. They focus more on the rhythms, but I'm not saying the leads are entirely absent or non-existent because that would be an untrue statement. What their overall concept in this sort of musical change compared to past releases is the implementation of the synthesizers and a more melodic sounding gothic album, not just plain brutality.

As you get from track to track, you'll find different tempos, some tint of clean vocals/guitar, but in an overall sense the release is really dark and demented. The vocals range, but mostly are intense throat, screaming away. A total musical onslaught here musically, lyrically and atmospherically. It's a really likeable release because it's balls out brutality a lot of the time, but it ranges though as the speed of the album is moderate. The guitars are thick and heavy, the drumming pounding through your skull and vocals just deafening. There's more clean guitar/vocals as the album progresses. The synthesizers make it so grim, but they didn't abandon their roots in metal, they went diversifying.

What's unique even more so is the fact that they have some chorus parts that are so emotionally felt, with guest backup female voice and even more so riffs that are so creative. When hearing this album, don't overlook the fact that they change things up and aren't tackling just one genre, they're tackling gothic, heavy and death oriented metal, though gothic is prominent on here. It's a blend, I think that they wanted a change from what they originally started out doing nor by any means wanting to sell-out by changing a bit. They want a different array of sound to their music and I think that they covered all avenues on here. You get so many influences on this release it's incredible.

Still think that it's just average as I write this? No, this album is NOT an average rating. It's way higher because the music is what's so notorious on here and guitar that's so admirable. They did an outstanding job in the production quality picking the right engineer to get this one mixed way awesome featuring every instrument/sound/vocal parts to be well heard and entirely admirable. A sheer dominance in the gothic metal community and I think a highly underrated album to say the least. Nothing boring or stale about this one. They attract it all on here, sounds like those never heard before by this band and a concept of just more than a simple gothic release, a musical gem in metal.

Rating: 9 (out of 10) ratings explained

Reviewed by Death8699
05/03/2015 19:15