This Ending - Inside The Machine

This Ending is the reincarnation of a somewhat old school band called A Canorous Quintet. Old school for me at least. They were one of the first swedish melodic death metal bands I heard when I was just getting into this stuff in 97ish, back when swedish melodic death still had balls. Their 1998 release The Only Pure Hate is still one of my favorite albums. The singer also did the vocals for the absolutely incredible side project, October Tide, with Jonas Renske of Katatonia. Bless Pandora radio for re-introducing me to these guys cause I doubt I would have discovered them on my own.

Musically, this is very much in line with what The Only Pure Hate was back in 1998. The production is better of course, but the riffs, drums, and overall sound has the same feel as ACQ. In fact, its a very similar sound to much of the mid to late 90s swedish metal that has recently fallen off the radar. Maybe that's why I'm enjoying it so much. It reminds me of why I fell in love with this style of music 10 years ago.

Unfortunately if you clicked on the above link to their homepage you'll notice that their image has definitely changed. They look like a shitty Engel-like band. Oh well, at least they still sound good.

8/10

This makes me want to look into whatever happened to another one of my favorite melodic death bands, Autumn Leaves, whose album As Night Conquers Day was also one of my first, and still a favorite, melodic metal album. Well holy crap, a guitarist from Autumn Leaves is now doing The Arcane Order... Going to have to check them out.

Isole - Bliss Of Solitude

I usually multitask while listening to the music for these reviews, which is one reason why they are often brief or just terrible (not that this review won't be terrible as well). However, I put everything aside and gave this album my full attention. I didn't really intend to do that, the album just forced my attention to it. I'm not sure how to categorize Isole, although perhaps doom comes closest to what is heard. The band reminds me a bit of Daylight Dies or Novembers Doom.

Well, whatever one wants to call this band, Bliss Of Solitude is an incredibly fascinating piece of metal. The guitars are super thick, and even the acoustic guitars have a huge sound. Most of the main riffs of the song are slower tempo drudges of doom, but there is a lot of intricacies going on that keeps the listener alert. The singer does all clean vocals, and has a slight haunted effect to his voice, which adds a ton of atmosphere to the album. The third track had about 10 seconds of a female voice. She only seemed to sing a line or two, and that was the only time she appeared on the album, which seems a bit strange. Maybe they couldn't afford to pay her for more...

The 7 tracks clock in at a lengthy seven minutes, and the only weakness might be that it drones on a tad too long here and there. I enjoyed all the tracks, and could not constructively advise as to what to cut out though. The first two tracks "By Blood" and "From Clouded Sky" were my favorite. Good stuff is all over this album.

8/10