Review Frostmoon Eclipse - The End Stand Silent 2011

Slow black / death metal and me work together as well as a clown can merge on an upper class soiree. I like death metal but at the slow pace it can be so incredibly annoying and this is precisely the tempo in which Frostmoon Eclipse has chosen to to play.

Frostmoon Eclipse comes from Italy and has been playing for 17 years, during which they've managed to put together four full length albums, an equal number of EPs and a couple of demos, split discs, etc. A relatively poor discography of 17 years if I'm to be frank, but almost one individual EP or album every two years, it's not entirely unproductive. When I listen to 'The End Stand Silent', it feels like I can understand why it takes so long between the releases, because it feels like a band that, at least on this album (I have not listened on their back catalogue too closely), works for quite some time with their records. 'The End Stand Silent' feel thoroughly conceived in many ways but especially when it comes to melodies and structure. The 14 minutes long introductory song feels like a mini-opera in itself, and Italians as they are maybe that' was the plan (?), with what seems like a small story set in the song. The band also choose to end the album with a nearly 13 minute long song and I can't help but wonder why the band chooses to fill an album with almost 65 minutes of music divided into seven tracks. It's like buying sliced bread in the store and get a loaf of seven slices as thick as small cars.

Anyway, the seven songs end up over the hours when you put them in the same bag. The ingrediences are as fashionable when it comes to slow metal bakery of the extreme type: growlish vocals, simple guitar loops, frenetic drumming and honestly not very heavy at all. However, there is also parts of the content list that distinguishes Frostmoon Eclipse slightly from the pile of bands that play this kind of music. This can be found in how they use attributes as atmosphere (which they have plenty of) and how they scale back the aggressive sound curtain to a calm, harmonic sound that comes in between the violent parts where they instead talk instead of sing and use soft and rhythmic drums with guitars that say "now we take one step at a time, one forward, one backward and one to the side" before they break out in to new aggressive parts which have drumming almost like blast beats and the string section seems to have had epileptic seizures (but without speeding up the music, just the speed on how they play the instruments).

My favorite track is probably the third, Corridors, which feels like the song on which they focus on making music rather than metal most. The guitars in this track are really cool and even if most of the album feels pretty well planned and nothing immediately comes to your mind as "how the hell have they reasoned here?" I feel Corridor is more well written than the others (and well played of course). It has a natural flow and the aggressive political parties will not enter as abruptly and direct as in the other songs, here they are led in to these parts by natural flow and not thrown in to it. Otherwise the aggressive parts comes here and there with something that at best can be called a bridge between them. It's not like they're bad or anything, but it is definitely better when done in Corridors and sneaked at you more.

Overall, I think this album clearly shows that this is a band that puts more thought in to their music than most others in the genre. There are melodies, there are song structures and there is clearly a thought behind it all. The songs takes you somewhere despite that the album is so long with such long tracks. The 65 minutes feels quite decent and not as dangerous as it might sound. This is a band that clearly has used their 17 years to evolve in to a band that does more than just slower black or death metal. Frontmoon Eclipse feels rather like a band that plays music and they play it their own way which is something that can be likened to slow black or death metal, although I'd wouldn't like to call them any of it. It is simply extreme metal of a quieter kind with harmonies and melodies.

It is one of the best albums I've heard that's been released by Osmose Productions and an album that I understand completely. Should you invest in this type of music and want something epic, something that really will last and hold up longer than your current rebellious stage of life, you have Frostmoon Eclipse here. They have released their fifth full length album this year. This is a clown that actually will be able to fit on an upper class soiree.

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Frostmoon Eclipse The End Stand Silent

Frostmoon Eclipse
The End Stand Silent