Another Mexican band from Sempiternal Productions, this time playing a relatively slow and melodic form of metal that's a little unusual, but it's quite bland and weak, so I just can't get into it. The vocals are sort of effortlessly half grunted/growled and powerless, with some deep spoken passages or singing on occasion, and the music is sort of like atmospheric doom metal or something, except that it's not really ominous at all. It's slightly melodic and there are keyboards used, but it's not particularly heavy - both due to the production and the rather tame songwriting. The guitar tone is really thin and there's not a lot of bass in the mix either, so vocals and drums sort of take the outer edges of the mix with guitar in the center leaving a lot of gaps scattered about. The clean guitars sound pretty good, and so do some of the synths, but I don't like the fact that the synths are often used more during intros or random spiraling little melodies that don't really add to the songs - they're not always a constant presence, but they should be since that's the style the band seems to be going for. A couple of the more somber guitar harmonies bring to mind Paradise Lost circa "Shades of God", but for the most part this CD is really uninteresting and lacking in significant amounts of force across the board. It's too consistently slow for as bland as the riffs are, the songs are way too long and redundant (running from five to nine minutes), and it's just a dull listen. The last three tracks are from a different recording session and sound slightly fuller and more crisp, but the recording is still not right for what they're doing as it lacks any form of heaviness. I'm not sure about the visual aspects either. I guess the artwork fits with the frequent astral/nature references of the lyrics, but the bright colors and computer generated landscapes and outer space textures are still a little cheesy (as are some of the posed band photos). I don't know what's going on with this. The performances aren't so bad, and there are a handful of cool harmonies or whatever... but that certainly can't save nearly an hour's worth of material.
[Sempiternal]
Running time - 57:05, Tracks: 9
[Notable tracks: none of them really jump out at me]
Sempiternal Productions - http://www.sempiternalproductions.com
