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Rating:
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Edenian - Winter Shades
15 December 2011
01. Decadent Blossoms (Intro)
02. Thy Heavens Wept In Mourn
03. Winter Shades
04. The Field Where I Died
05. When I Gave Her My Eden
06. Embittered Silence
07. Beauty Entwined
08. Fall The Dusk
09. Burning Horizon
10. Beneath An Abstract Sun (Outro)
Let's get the obligatory facts out of the way, shall we?
Edenian are not related to the Mortal Kombat franchise, but are rather a gothic metal band hailing from Kharkov, Ukraine. Wanted to clarify as the bulk of Bing/Google results directed me to Mortal Kombat wikis rather than metal sites. They are a goth metal band, not a cadre of assassins descended from pixelated deities.
As with many of the bands in this vein they opt for the "beauty and the beast" vocal approach, which is to say angelic female clean singing countered by the evil, dark growling male. Musically it is similar as well, clean tones while the femme fatale sings, crank the distortion, chug and thud away while the dude rawrs away.
Musically for the most part everything sounds good. Musicians are competent and the production is swell, giving the heavier bits some oomph. The biggest drawback is while I haven't listened to terribly much of this genre, based upon the album cover and imagery I knew exactly what to expect. It's just not terribly exciting. If I've listened to just a handful of goth-meets-doom metal albums and wasn't surprised, I'm sure this will just be color-by-numbers old hat to those more in to the genre.
The vocals are more problematic. As with the music, the shifts from siren call to demon growls are pretty much as expected. They also employ the occasional clean male singing as well, so I guess there is a slight curve ball tossed in. The growls are adequate, and are the best of the vocal approaches. In an effort to play nice (I really do not like wafflestomping young bands), I'll simply state that the female vocals are significantly better than the rejects who flame out of American Idle during the ridiculous first try-out phase, but in no way come close to the Tarja's or Simone's of the metal world. At times they sound great, others they just seem off.
If you are one of those types that gets a hard-on for all metal female fronted, give it a shot. If you are not, Winter Shades is not the place to start.
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Performance:
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6 |
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Songwriting:
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6 |
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Originality:
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5 |
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Production:
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8 |
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Written on 25.05.2012 by
BitterCOld
BitterCOld has been officially reviewing albums for MetalStorm since 2009.
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Comments
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10
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Users visited:
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196 |
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| Sounds like a poor man's Draconian... |
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Quote:
If you are one of those types that gets a hard-on for all metal female fronted, give it a shot.
I'm one of those, but I like the premise and usually not the final result 
I checked a couple of songs and while this sounds not bad at all, yeah, there is nothing I didn't already get from Draconian. |
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Written by Troy Killjoy on 25.05.2012 at 02:31
Sounds like a poor man's Draconian...
Sounds like it'll be in the bargain bin in a few months. |
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 BudDa - 25.05.2012 at 12:01
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| Do bands such as this desperately try to sound different and fail at it or because they are already on a Label(Coz I have just checked their facebook page and they are signed to Solitude Productions which is a Russian Doom Metal Label), the Label usually makes the band sound like another, usually bigger, well established band(in this case, Epica)? |
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Written by BudDa on 25.05.2012 at 12:01
Do bands such as this desperately try to sound different and fail at it or because they are already on a Label(Coz I have just checked their facebook page and they are signed to Solitude Productions which is a Russian Doom Metal Label), the Label usually makes the band sound like another, usually bigger, well established band(in this case, Epica)?
It's likely due to the band, not the label.
(And just fyi, BitterCOld reviews a ton of releases from Solitude... probably over 75% of his reviews are for Solitude releases, actually.) |
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BudDa - 25.05.2012 at 16:50
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Written by Troy Killjoy on 25.05.2012 at 13:29
It's likely due to the band, not the label.
(And just fyi, BitterCOld reviews a ton of releases from Solitude... probably over 75% of his reviews are for Solitude releases, actually.)
Oh. Ok. Thanx for that info as well |
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| Solitude is doom, but has sub-labels - Slow Burn, BadMoodMan which do varieties of doom, "dark", gothic-y, post. The label seems cool with just letting artists do whatever, at least based solely on the 50 or so albums i've listened to and reviewed from the label-family. |
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| Annoying, but they have the possibilities to do better in future, maybe without female voice. |
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| The fact that this album even exists is simply fantastic, we just don't have enough of this kind of bands nowadays. :/ |
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| Sounds a lot like Draconian... After a couple of listens though, it can really grow on you. Not original at all, but good. Definately more than a 5.5. Production is amazing considering the guy mixed and mastered everything himself |
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