Sunken
Departure

A band calling themselves Sunken, you kind of have to guess that it is an album revolving around voids and darkness beneath thousands of tons of salt water. Departure is the debut album of the Danish quartet and according to the short statement following the album they are ready to take the world by storm with their music inspired by nature, the ocean and melancholic thoughts – thoughts like the ones you could have if you find yourself sunken beneath tons of salt water somewhere in the large oceans. So, the question is whether or not they are actually going to take the world by storm.

Their music is best described as atmospheric black metal with long tracks and a rather standard black metal production. The five tracks takes you over fifty minutes to play which means that the tracks are very long, but they kind of work as they keeps moving forward and not doubling back in direction – they do tend to be a tad slow though. The vocals aren’t particularly interesting either and the sensation is that this band is targeting the atmospheric black metal crowd exclusively. I don’t think that they offer anything new, fresh or exciting, just the sense of a dark salty void with the pressure of many tons of water pressing down on us.

This album does not overly impress me, it may be somewhat more interesting than much of the black metal genre but it feels too slow, too dull to really keep the interest up throughout the album. The songs could have been more dynamic and the album could have been shorter, that would have been an improvement in my view. Ironically I think that this album lacks depth and perhaps the best use of the album would be to have it sunken down the deep dark depths of the salty oceans, or perhaps it should be given to the fans of the atmospheric black metal genre as I think they are probably the only possible fans I see for this album – but they seem to like it.

In the end I cannot really recommend this album to anyone but the ones who like atmospheric black metal. Most of us will see it as a rather bland and rather dull album without too many upsides, it is decent atmospheric black metal but it is too tired and too monotonous to really shine. Perhaps it is an album that works best if you are sunken into a dark void under many tons of salt water.

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