Eerie is the brainchild of Bulgarian long-time underground metal figure Misho Mihaylov. With Eerie, his goal was to mix old school extreme metal rawness with modern technology. The album's nice cover art is surely highly peculiar in metal music world. It has images of sea, Poseidon, steamship, rum bottles and other things that have something to do with sea. Eerie consists of many things, but how do they all merge with each other?

This surely is an individual take on extreme metal, at least I haven't come across similar stuff. Brutal 1980s or early 1990s style heavy death metal guitar riffing and pummeling drums. However, sadly it's about loud 'n' echoing drum machine generated beats that irritate me enormously. And those bloody cymbals... These machine drums tend to bury other elements under them, and do it rather badly too. The riffing reminds something like earlier Samael (up to 1996's 'Passage'), Morgoth during 'Odium' album (1993) and Pestilence during the first half of 1990s.

It often gets into industrial premises, with the drum machine only enforcing this fact. Another side of Eerie is the atmospheric progression, but there are also some preset-sounding approaches. Synthesized soundscapes usually are well created and include Mid-Eastern ethno music bits, e.g. the beginning of the album, 'The Saint' and 'Master Race', as well as tribal drumming stuff. Non-distorted guitars and Devin Townsend-esque distorted guitar work are meshed in well, giving the band more space to operate on. The bass guitar work can be very lively, if heard under the rumbling kick drum samples. So, the songs take more or less sudden turns and is the angel of mercy for 'Hollow Stare', even though at times it can be rather messy, too. Anyway, this is a rather mid-paced album, with some exceptions, like 'I Can Lead You's blast beat tempos. Talking about the messiness, at times it sounds like there's two songs going on simultaneously, thanks to weirder electronics mixed in. ...And Ocean's stuff comes to my mind while listening to Eerie, too.

The vocals, by Mortal Remains' Emo Manchevski, are about hoarse and craggy throat and grunting, but not very powerful, and a lot of it is like speaking with some stretching of words. It is very straightforward and unvarying, up to the level of it becoming a bit of a bore. Some of the lyrics are mystical, some are rather straight (e.g. 'Master Race', which is not about racing cars... Hah!).

Seven years after my first review for 'Hollow Stare', it now sounds like an interesting and individual mixture. Surely, it has both its strengths and weaknessses. And I am afraid, that the cons drag 'Hollow Stare' into depths, but on the other hand, those intriguing ideas the album is filled with can lift it up on the surface and even above it. Not very high, though, but at least so that 'Hollow Stare' is not at all a bad option for those who like industrial metal, if the price is low.

Rating: 5½ (out of 10) ratings explained

Reviewed by Lane
10/25/2017 19:47