Serene Dark
Enantiodromia

“This album will be received as a new but familiar sound for any previous fans of our last band (Endemise)… We want our fans to get lost in the music. We want to pique some interest in fans of this style of music…” Is a statement I read in the press material about this album by Serene Dark that used to be called Endemise  - so why did they change the band name? this statement hardly indicates that it is a new style they are creating. New but familiar sounds like a new album should sound, novelty but perhaps with traces of familiar stuff from what the band has done before, that is no reason to change name. But they have done so and it might be considered a clean slate or fresh start, but the Ottawa band doesn’t really toss away the shackles of the past so the third album by these guys is called Enantidromia, a needlessly complex name for a pretty simple album.

The press material says blackened death metal, and why not? It is more or less what it is, death metal or black metal can probably also be used. It is growly vocals, and heavy aggressive stuff – no surprises, or maybe there is. The spoken word part about evil and stuff is surprisingly good, I usually abhor spoken word parts in albums as they usually just make it worse, but this is interesting and good. Perhaps because the album itself is quite genre-typical and doesn’t really offer much exciting stuff. The production is average, the extreme metal sounds are quite typical and the playing time way, way, way, way, way too long with 55 arduous minutes to go through. Still, it is not as bad as some stuff in the extreme metal genre.

I cannot really claim to be impressed, the press material quotes several positive statements from reviewers and I am baffled. How the hell can they think what they write about this? Am I missing something? So, I listen again and the same sense of drudge comes and soon I am very bored and not really listening anymore and that is the way it seems to be when I play this album, I quickly loose interest and only listens slightly when the spoken word parts play. The songs do nothing for me, and soon I am happy that it ends.

Extreme metal is difficult to do well as it always risks becoming a smattering of sound crowned with ridiculous voiceovers, this is not one of the caricatures that populate the extremer metal genre so they have that going for them but in the end they don’t really have much else speaking to their advantage. It is quite drab, and it is probably only if you really like the blacker death metal stuff you should look at it, anyone else will be better off not buying Enantiodromia.

HHHHHHH