| CD REVIEW My Silent Wake/ The Drowning |
|
|
Band: My Silent Wake/ The Drowning This is a very fine split-album, if only because both bands appear with four new tracks (not necessarily ‘own’ songs, often cover songs, yet unreleased before officially), with twice a duration that could be considered a full CD. The album gets released on Iowa, US-based Bombworks, a records label that has some nice releases on its rooster lately – think In Grief, Sympathy, Azmaveth, Dagon, Darkness Before Dawn and so on. My Silent Wake did work with Bombworks Records before – the review on their latest album, A Garland Of Tears, is still available on Concreteweb (posted in February 2009); as for The Drowning it’s the first collaboration. Both bands have lots of things in common, and I’m not only referring to the musical style they perform. First of all they come, more or less, from the same region. Secondly, both bands did share the stage several times before, and tertio, the members did some guest or session stuff to each other. My Silent Wake can be considered a ‘typical UK Doom/ Death-formation’, having released three albums on this label in mean time. The four songs on Black Lights & Silent Roads last for about forty one (!) minutes. All of them were, like before, recorded at Kewsound Studio by original and main member Ian Arkley (v, g; also in Paramaecium, Ashen Mortality, The Other Window, Century Sleeper or Seventh Angel), (session) drummer S. Allan (who also did production, mix and engineering), J. Whyte (v, percussion), A. Lee (g) and K. Hamilton (b, v, k and engineering), and the mastering was done at JM Mastering by J. Mortimer. In spite of the Christian belief of some members (Ian’s band Seventh Angel, for example, is a Christian-inspired formation), My Silent Wake’s music has no religious context or contents. The (lyrical) concepts have the same basics (faith and loss of faith), yet seen from a personal and / or universal point of view, rather than from a Judeo-Christian one. Opening track “I Am (Eternity)” is an Attrition-cover and features guest vocals by Attrition’s Martin Bowes. It is an own interpretation of this dark and melancholic song, much more gloomy than the original. “Bleak Endless Winter” is a new song that pays tribute to the Great Three, (especially) Paradise Lost, My Dying Bride and Anathema, yet with a modernised touch. When listening to this epos, it isn’t that bizarre to notice I was extremely pleased with the band’s latest recording (“A Garland Of Tears”; see higher), is it? The third track, “Devoid Of Light”, is My Silent Wake’s semi-acoustic interpretation of a The Drowning-song, again with a self-inspired proper performance, lacking of any Death Metal element, caressing the border with melancholic Post-Rock in the vein of certain Prophecy- and Auerbach-releases. These three songs last between 5:42 and 5:59 minutes, but the last one, Rebirth, clocks over twenty three minutes. “Rebirth” starts as a mind-transcending Ambient piece and, after about eight minutes, continues as, again, a rather Prophecy or Auerbach alike Post-Rock/ Post-Metal hymn with (mainly) acoustic and (some) electric guitars, sixties / seventies-alike synths and both clean vocals and grunts. The quintet The Drowning, formed in 2003, brings one older yet previously unreleased song (“The Doomsday Feire”) and two new own tracks (“Arc Light” and “Silent Epiphany”), and a My Silent Wake-cover, “A Photograph”. These four hymns have duration of thirty two minutes (4:51 to 10:38 minutes) and were recorded at Offshore. All of them dwell too within the same spheres as the Great UK-Three (Paradise Lost, My Dying Bride and Anathema), yet their approach reminds me too to several (Doom-Death) bands from Ireland, Finland, Norway, Belgium and The Netherlands …always with a sound à la early nineties. In comparison to My Silent Wake, The Drowning are much more ‘Death’-oriented (less ‘Post’-alike), and in comparison to most Doom-Death bands, the whole does sound as original as all of them (meaning: very limited level of originality), yet because of the superb song writing and nice performance, their part on this split is of a magisterial high quality. And in case of the My Silent Wake-cover “A Photograph”: what a splendid version, as impressing as the original one! My Silent Wake: 80/100 Ivan Tibos. |
