[Funeral Doom]
Not a Gleam of Hope (2005)
Review: Sometimes you listen to an album and it doesn't do much for you, but then as you listen to it more and more it starts to grow on you. Such was my experience with /Not a Gleam of Hope/, except I really liked it the first time I heard it as well. On to complaints: The atmosphere is haunting and synth-driven. It's one of the weaker points of the album. Sometimes the synths feel overused and they bring about a pretty mono-dimensional perspective to the music. The last track (4th) on the album is probably the most disappointing in this respect. Aside from a brief interlude of some inhuman sounding operatic vocals it's just 10 minutes of "empty and haunting" keyboards. I'm a big fan of such kinds of things when something else is added to the mix, however disappointingly that is not the case here.
The vocals are a strong point on this album. They sound like the growls coming from a mighty demon entrapped in the ground, choking on black sludge hatred. They definitely have "force" behind them. The riffs are very slow and simple, and don't take much of a primary role in the music, but rather work alongside the keyboards. The drumming follows a very slow tempo and is about what you would expect for a funeral doom band that doesn't take a more varied approach.
The songwriting can be described with two words: effective and simple. This is a good thing and a bad thing. The music is immediately enjoyable and often quite memorable. It all progresses very smoothly and there is a very clean and orderly feeling to the whole experience. On the other hand there isn't an incredibly large amount of material on the album as a whole. Each part of the music repeats quite a bit and with practically no variation. That isn't to say the music is too repetitive. It moves along at a pretty moderate and comfortable pace, if not a little slow at times.
The first and second songs are each solid, however the third song has to be my favorite. It starts off with a piercing depressive guitar melody, and from there it just gets better--suddenly delving into a darker moment before rising up again. And then the rest of the instruments start to come in and it snowballs into a depressive melodic funeral doom avalanche. Then towards the middle there are some quite beautiful melodies. This song hits the spot perfect by mixing emotions with excellent execution.
This is a very solid album in my eyes. It could use more depth overall but it's just enjoyable and well done.
8/10
http://www.mediafire.com/?ny2zgdodyzt
Lengthy songs are good me thinks. Loves Cataracts
