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Jack Frost - Gloom Rock Asylum review



Reviewer:
7.8

3 users:
7.33
Band: Jack Frost
Album: Gloom Rock Asylum
Release date: 2000


01. Sober
02. You Are The Cancer
03. How Will I Sleep
04. I Gloom
05. Psycodrome
06. Sink
07. California Dreamin' [The Mamas And The Papas cover]
08. Beyond The Rubicon

Jack Frost releases their fourth album in the year 2000, and it also become an important album in the band's career, because is the albums that finally defined the band as a Doom Metal band with Gothic influences from the eighties, which fits the music perfectly.

Last Jack Frost album, "Glow Dying Sun" was a monotone piece and to be honest it bored me, now I have the new release, and frankly it looks good from the beginning, I mean, take a look at the cover art, is just gorgeous, it evokes everything a Doom band would like to express, besides that the photography is great.

Onward then, the music has given a extra touch this time, first things aren't as slow as past releases, and the whole vibe of the music has a Gothic touch in it.
Jack Frost are known because they can imbibe themselves with industrial quantities of alcohol (so I read), so the intro "Sober" must be an ironic joke, anyway, the intro melds into "You Are The Cancer" a fast-paced song (fast-paced in the Jack Frost world is mid-paced in the normal world) which is one of the best songs I've heard from these guys so far, catchy rhythms and great hooks, without loosing the melancholic edge to the music.

This album, which is the best-selling Jack Frost album to the date, is a transition album, the new influences are sprinkled with a lot of patterns reminiscent of the past works, the violin, the ultra-slow songs and the weeping vocals.
As for the vocals, this time are surely less dramatic, sometimes Phred Phinster tries to sing actually, instead of mourn.

One of the real highlights of this album is the cover version of the classic "California Dreamin´" originally performed by The Mammas And The Pappas, the song has been granted with the Jack Frost touch, that means, has been slowed down, and has this great violin (or it was a cello?) in the middle that adds an extra melancholic touch, the song is really an interesting listen.

With this album Jack Frost has incorporated some Gothic influences in their music, and this just might be the twist that the music needed, I think that this album will bring Jack Frost to wider audiences.
Jack Frost has finally found their sound, the only thing left is refine it.

Written by Undercraft | 10.05.2004





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