Einvera: In Your Image

A number of bands from Europe, such as Opeth and Amorphis, have previously combined their home country's folk music into their metal style. It's not something I can recall hearing from an American band before. First, the metal. It's fast, technical progressive death metal. Aggressive and in your face, and precisely executed. There are also some jazzy cleaner sections that give you a little break before pummeling you again. The vocals are mostly delivered death metal style, with some singing in the mix for a change of pace. It's a personal preference of mine, but I would like to have heard more singing. It seems to be about a 70% death to 30% clean mix. There are also some bits of vocoder-esque effects here and there that, along with the jazzy sections, reminds me of Cynic.

Now, on the folk. I'd call it Americana. A mix of blues, bluegrass and country, with a few hints of jazz and vaudeville. Einvera uses everything from mandolin and accordion to glockenspiel and trumpet, most of these played by the three member core of the band. These musical sections wouldn't be out of place next to Allison Krauss, Nickel Creek, or others in the Newgrass scene, or along side avant-guard metal acts like the Diablo Swing Orchestra. The folk bits appear mostly as intros, outros, and breaks in songs, with the exception of the instrumental "Send Me Home", a banjo and pedal steel driven bluegrass romp. I'd like to hear them incorporated further into the main body of the songs, but on "In Your Image" there's just enough of an Americana splash that it never gets tedious or silly. Einvera have done an excellent job bringing something unusual and fresh to the American technical death metal scene.

Track Listing
1. Static Ascension
2. Let in Without a Name (Sea of Trees)
3. Invariably Transient
4. Send Me Home
5. Prismatic Distortion
6. In Your Image
7. The Gift of a Ghost
8. A Mausoleum for the Living

Added: July 22nd 2011
Reviewer: Sean Gill
Score:
Related Link: Band Website
Hits: 1885
Language: english

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