Tracklist:
- Into Illusion
- Killing what Can’t be Handled
- My Closest Demon
- This Curse
- No Darker Place
- Standards of Rebellion
- Indifferent
- The Skeleton who Sold its Skin
- Vargavidderna (instrumental)
- I, Enemy
- Confinement
There are some albums which leave so little to the
imagination that I’d be prepared to bet my soul on how they’ll sound before the
disk even enters the tray. Written six
years ago, this little number was the full-length debut of a little-known
Swedish death metal band called Eventide, who have recently gone into
hiatus. And it’s fair to say they seem
to have been trying to make an impression.
Entitled Diaries from the Gallows, the album artwork features a battered
etching in which an even more battered-looking victim is being dragged by his
neck to a scaffold in the background.
First impressions are hardly dispelled by the first lines of music: the
ten-second long, electronically distorted scream of what sounds like a choking
sinner sinking eternally into six feet of satanic sewage. Another hour of shouty-shouty, death-themed
noise. Just what we’ve all been waiting
for.
Within minutes, it was evident
I’d been completely duped. Filing my
first impressions under “misconceptions”, I set about reconsidering my
approach. Nominally, Eventide’s style
can be considered melodic death metal, employing a combination of death and
clean vocals, heavy metal instruments, and a smattering of strings and keys. But all this is about as useful as saying
they’re a 4-piece band. What sets the
style apart is the moderate-to-slow tempo of songs, a background strung with
melodic riffs, and an intriguing interplay between electric and acoustic guitar
work.
All this is slightly reminiscent
of a nice bunch of Greek lads called Rotting Christ, who briefly caught my
attention a few years ago. But I’ll
happily bet Diaries from the Gallows will hold my interest for quite a bit
longer. On a basic level, Eventide’s
debut is musically far superior in both ability and quality. Time signatures are varied, often between
simple 4-time and 3-time (for the latter see, for example, track 6, Standards
of Rebellion). But there’s also a bit
of devious subtlety here, with the odd beat being added onto the end of musical
phrases and bars in tracks 2, Killing what Can’t be Handled, and 5, No Place
Darker. Meanwhile, heavy guitars and
bass hammer out bold, irregular rhythms, creating a jagged landscape on which
Eventide build their musical themes.
For all the band’s ability and
willingness to mix things up, less is definitely more. Like so many others in the genre, Eventide
were drawn to the temptation of synth strings.
But, unlike many of their contemporaries, they resisted the temptation
to vomit symphonic gush over every verse, chorus, and intro. There are some instances of ill-advised mush
entering their repertoire, with just a hint of hazy synth chords in tracks 4,
5, and 8. But these are rare anomalies. Strings are used throughout to trace out
melodic lines with clear, precise strokes.
Elsewhere, they’re used to give little dabs of colour, as in tracks 2,
3, and 6, where pizzicato strings pick out staccato rhythms over the top of the
music. This approach isn’t left to
strings, with mellow guitars and bright keys picking out short, repetitive
patterns. A good example comes with the
final song, Confinement, in which keys and guitars double up to trace simple
lines behind the whispered vocals.
While doubling up different
instruments on melodies is common throughout – see also the lone fiddle behind
the guitar on Standards of Rebellion – it belies an overall sparse tone to the
music. In general, different sounds are
not mixed, and there’s little excessive layering of tones. This often allows the music to rapidly
alternate between deep and heavy, with crashing distorted power chords, to calm
and reflective, with acoustic guitar picking.
And it reflects the band’s generally minimalistic approach to their
music. There’s nothing brain-melting
about harmonies, although they’re always varied enough to maintain
interest. And the same melodic themes
and riffs are strung out across entire songs, interchanging with others as the
music develops but, in themselves, rarely changing. In many cases, these simple, repetitive melodies serve their own
purposes: where they crop up behind death vocals, for example, they replace the
vocal melodies that would have been provided by clean vocal lines. But it reflects a more general desire not to
go overboard with rapid changes of musical themes and wild instrumentalisation. In this respect, it’s perhaps best
illustrated in track 9, the entirely instrumental Vargavidderna, which opens to
delicate acoustic guitars playing a simple picking theme. Over the top emerges a solitary melodic
drone, which then repeatedly interchanges with the original acoustic guitar
line until the track fades to the same theme as it first entered.
None of this is likely to appeal
to fans of bombastic, crashing prog metal, but this doesn’t hinder the
album. Helped, no doubt, by the slow
pace of the music, the simplicity leaves every note feeling perfectly measured,
completely unhurried, and deliberately placed.
And it’s an approach which is mirrored in the lyrical themes Eventide
have pursued. A quick glance over the
song titles – note, particularly, Killing what Can’t be Handled – might suggest
a standard metal mix of murder and brutality; the lyrics themselves suggest
otherwise. In fact, I’d hazard a guess
that both the sinister figure and his sprawled victim who he is dragging to the
gallows on the album cover are one and the same person. This is a fairly straightforward issue of a
divided self, a personality struggling against those features it carries with
itself, and which it resents, and those it aspires to.
This idea seems to be common to
all songs on the album, and is played out through the dual themes of light and
dark. These are concepts which could
have been plucked straight out of the bible, where they’re interchangeable with
good and evil. But when they’re used in
metal – and they often are – a lot of artists choose invert them, creating
shame out of light and finding virtue in darkness. Eventide have done exactly this, contrasting the tedium of
choirboy conformity with the allure of independence which is promised by
rebelling against it. In track 3, My
Closest Demon, darkness is established as a sinister and uncontrollable force
which cannot be repressed. It comes
“from deep within/where skeleton meets skin”.
But this personal experience is nevertheless a popular, anarchic force,
resonating with the dark masses: “Carrying the strength of a thousand/and the
chaos of one”. This idea of a rising,
popular force is continued in track 6, the outstanding Standards of Rebellion,
which proclaims “the riot of the lower classes/one thousand fists and feet
enraged/coming to pull you under”.
At its base lies an urge to split
the self from moral constraints to unleash the inner creative urges for liberty
are followed up in the aptly titled The Skeleton who Sold its Skin: “I played
the tones of morality/It wasn’t my style”.
But, as the final track – another particularly good one, by the way –
Confinement, the self is enslaved to those restrictions it has made its own,
resulting in a bleak and joyless existence: “In my confinement/the walls are
grey/there are no windows here/there are no days”. It is an oppressive and unaccountable force, which answers to
none: “These walls have eyes/but they won’t speak”. Yet this, the final song of the album, suggests a sense of
resignation alien to the rebellious fury of earlier tracks. Soft, clean vocals call gently for no end to
the torment, pleading to the “Keeper of the keys/grant me not the favour of
release/give me no more than what you think I need/and I will do as you
please”.
So, what’s the meaning of the
album? It’s fucking nihilism, my
son. And it sounds awesome. Musically, Eventide created something really
special, successfully managing to combine the raw fury of extreme metal with
the reflective emotion of the folk
guitar ballad. Every note, from the
pounding and battle-hardened to the weary and resigned, is weighted so
carefully you could balance it on your hat.
In fact, there’s something brilliant – magical, almost – in the
simplicity in which songs are put together, even if the odd track falls short
of the overall standard. Eventide’s
debut should therefore be considered a genuine, if very much understated,
classic of its genre. Buy it, download
it, steal it from a shop – whatever you do, you owe it to yourself to give it a
go. In the meantime, there’s one avid
convert with a soul to win back…
Production: 4/5
Lyrics: 4/5
Album Cohesion: 4/5
Music: 9/10
Percentage Score: 84%
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