A lot of people (including many of my friends) have a very
difficult time enjoying music with an extremely low production quality (in
other words, the album sounds like crap). There are people out there that
actually love the low-quality sound of a lot of black metal that is out there;
I can say that there are many instances where I feel that the music wouldn’t
sound as good if the production quality was better and less raw. When you hear
black metal fans use the word “raw” when talking about music, the term refers
to the extreme lack of editing done to the original recordings. An Alignment of
Dead Stars is a perfect example of a “raw” black metal record. One of my
favorite types of music, ambient black, is almost always consisted of very low
quality and raw recordings. I only know of one ambient black artist that
actually puts some time into the mixing and production of his music and that is
Elffor.
The sound that Drowning the Light creates is a modernized
traditional black metal sound that has the production quality of a Velvet
Cacoon record. I think it’s because of the raw sound of the music that the
majority of the people I know of that have even heard of Drowning the Light are
people that pretty much only listen to black metal. Just look at a bunch of the
profiles on Spirit of Metal that have added Drowning the Light to their bands
list, you will see that the other bands on their list consist of mainly other
underground black metal bands.
I’m mentioning that purely as an observation. I’m not saying
that to bash or support Drowning the Light. Currently, I only have three albums
by these guys, and it’s hard to imagine that they could have anything better
because the three I have sound pretty much the same. Those albums are The Blood
of the Ancients, An Alignment of Dead Stars, and The Serpents Reign. The reason
why I gave this album one more point than the others is that the vocals sound a
lot better. The vocalist seems to be putting a lot more power and emotion into
his vocals as well as in the rest of the music.
This album reminds me somewhat of Woods of Desolation’s 2008
debut because there are several songs that have parts where there is just an
out of tune acoustic guitar playing a melodic lick to give the music some
atmosphere and set a certain tone that can’t really be put into words. The song
where this is most notable is Dragged to an Ocean Grave. There are also a
couple of short acoustic interludes sprinkled here and there like The Flame and
Drifting Away in a Sea of Sorrow (which is a beautiful track).
This record is one of those that I think is best for
background music; mainly because the album drags out and sounds like one long
song (not necessarily a bad thing). I’m saying that because it’s really hard
for me to just focus on the music for the whole album; it’s not one of those
albums that sucks me in and takes me away from reality like some albums do. So
when I just put all three of the albums I have on shuffle, you can’t really
tell the difference between all of the songs except for when you hear the
vocals from The Serpents Reign that sound like a cat choking on a duck.
Although it may seem like I’ve been ripping on this album
for most of the review, it’s not a bad album at all and is something you should
sit down and listen to. But rather than it sucking you in, it creates a mood
inside you that’s quite relaxing after a while. I would like to see Drowning
the Light do something different and a little more interesting. Other than
that, there isn’t really much else I can think of to say about this album other
than I would give this 14/20.
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