Tuesday 13 January 2015

Eerie - Into Everlasting Death

EERIE - Into Everlasting Death (ARACHNOPHOBIA - CD 2014) 
Arachnophobia keeps bringing all those new bands and new projects from the pits of the Polish underground and they surely must be praised for bringing to the light some truly exceptional names. Last weeks brought us two new such discoveries – one is called Sigihl and other one is Eerie. And about the latter and their debut „Into Everlasting Death” I will write couple of words now. I’ve read somewhere that this is an easy going album.. Ha, it wasn’t for me! I really had some struggles with „Into Everlasting Death”, as I just couldn’t really decide if I like it or not, what really bothers me in the music of Eerie and I could not make my final judgement straight away. Probably if someone gave me a dead line and told that I must review it on the first day when I started to listen to „Into Everlasting Death”, then I suppose my review would be quite negative. Of course I didn’t review it straight away, I never do and instead I decided to take few days, give several listens, at some point I even putted it aside for couple of days and then returned to it… all that to see, if „Into Everlasting Death” has really that something, that spark! Well, now I can say that I am still far from being truly enthusiastic about Eerie’s debut, I cannot say that this album is such an instant killer like Odraza or Abusiveness who blew me away from day one… But it’s not bad either. My opinion has to be one of those “yes, it’s a good album, BUT…”…
Generally Eerie performs sort of nihilistic black metal and I usually like such music a lot. But maybe in case of Eerie, there’s not enough quailty to impress me fully. This is one of those black metal albums, which are taking the old classic formulas, but on the other hand are using much broader influences. Of course we can’t say that Eerie discovered something new, because nowadays there are quite few similar black metal acts. The style / sound of this music has progressed incredibly over the past years, also towards something what we can find on „Into Everlasting Death”, so it is nothing new, but still surely exciting and adventurous. It may be unfair for Eerie to place them in a box so quickly, but this is inevitable for young bands (luckily though the band didn’t make “hooded” photos hehe!). So, we have here only four, long songs, with rich structures, some complex arrangements, not an easy or primitive means… Surely, they are not songs, which you can memorize easily and are far from being catchy. They do have some melodic accents, but it’s also harsh and uncompromising. More so, the band creates such sick, dark atmosphere, which often is almost hypnotizing. There are many impressive riffs or particular fragments and it’s also interesting that while most of similar acts would rather use slower, maybe doomy tempos, Eerie doesn’t avoid fast, blasting parts and such can be found on the album quite often. Listen to such “Of Descending Moon” as the most obvious, but not the only, example. But there’s a lot of diversity in this music as well, which you can especially hear in “Among the Ashes”, which by the way is my least favourite song from this album, I think it’s just boring a bit and I am happy than this is the only such slower song here.
So, what went wrong for Eerie, if I say that I am far from being utterly impressed? Well, I suppose it’s just that feeling, which tells you it’s an average album, nothing more. I just can’t feel that excitement or something truly remarkable in it. This music often flows and runs by without making any damage, being too indifferent… It’s fine, it’s decent and listenable, but nothing more than that. I must say also that I am happy that there are just four songs and little over 30 minutes of music. If it was longer, then it would just be boring. Finally, I have some doubts about some vocals here… The vocals on „Into Everlasting Death” are generally quite varied, V.O.W.O.C., who’s responsible for them, is using many different expressions, he has harsh vocals, screams and some more cleaner singing too… I understand the idea, but I don’t like some of his arrangements, some of the voices he uses, especially those cleaner ones… I simply can’t get used to them, they’re annoying and destroy otherwise a good fragment of music.
So, to resume… it’s good that these 30 minutes are all we get. I give this album 69/100, I don’t think Eerie deserves more, maybe I am actually more generous that I should… My opinion is that it’s slightly more than mediocre, nothing else than that. 

Final rate: 69/100

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