Fall Of Empyrean - A Life Spent Dying

The Fall Of Empyrean are a doom metal band from the U.S. Their debut was a grim, stunning piece of crushing atmosphere, right at the perfect time when death-doom was really getting popular. However, over time, Empyrean seemed to have kept themselves in the same vein with each album. The second album was just as crushing, but not very diverse. The group relies heavily on atmosphere, and create the depressing, crushing feelings very well with their distortion, but at the same time they limit their engaging audience. It takes someone who can stand lo-fi, droning metal along the lines of Evoken and Shades of Despair in order to enjoy a band like Fall Of Empyrean.

Their latest album, A Life Spent Dying, already sums up that this is going to be a doom metal album, full of depression and not much room for hope. So, fans should already know that the band are still head on to making something akin to what they've already done. However, this album is slightly more varied than the last one in the sense that it features more beautifully depressing acoustics than just the distorted ones. Still, that leaves the band with only two musical fronts to show their talent: beautiful instrumentals, and torrently crushing full featured doom-death music. There's two kinds of beauty on this album. One is seen in the opening track which features lots of piano mixed with backing keyboards and every once in the while the wail of a guitar. It sets up a great setting for the group, but unfortunately fans won't really hear this kind of 'beautifully' depressing style for the rest of the album. The other side of the more ear-pleasing tracks with more than just distorted depth are "Anhedonia" and "Lifeless In My Arms." These tracks completely contrast the harsh, electric guitar style of the tracks with vocals by offering lush acoustic guitar melodies that really make this album more atmospheric than Empyrean's previous work. Had they mixed up the acoustic music with the harsher stuff, it would have made this a revolutionarily progressive and fun album.

But, who is to say that doom metal is supposed to be fun? At least not this kind. Empyrean continue to do what they do best on tracks such as "Breathe Deep The Cinders" and "Catharsis:" crush any sort of hope for melodic 'niceness.' The passages are slow, VERY slow and reptitive dooming distortion. The vocals are deep, gutteral and ugly. Every once in a while things soften up and the distortion fog is lifted as the guitars offer picked strings, which is even more depressing than the chords, but that isn't shown for long. As a result, expect a lot of smilar sounding doom metal music that will be appeasing to those who only like death doom or funeral doom. There's little room to appreciate anything else. Of course, there are some more balanced doom tracks than others. "The Air Is Still" features more less distorted passages and even some spoken word verses that is similar to My Dying Bride's earlier style, but it is insignificant in the rolling weight of the death doom style as a whole for Empyrean. They won't be going melodic or gothic doom on fans anytime soon. But, if one is already a fan of this style, then adding one more death doom metal band to the list won't hurt. Fans looking for something with a bit more depth might want to look elsewhere. However, good news is that Empyrean is adding depth to their music yet, and well on their way to creating a type of album that will makes fans completely surprised.

 

  1. Bereft
  2. Breathe Deep The Cinders
  3. Vast Blut Desolate
  4. Anhedonia
  5. The Air Is Still
  6. A Long Silence
  7. Lifeless In My Arms
  8. Veins Split Wide
  9. Catharsis

Grau Records
Reviewer: Colin McNamara
Sep 26, 2010

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