My Silent Wake / The Drowning: Black Lights and Silent Roads Split

My Silent Wake and The Drowning are both UK bands that have shared stages before, so a split album was nothing unusual. Each act have recorded four original compositions for the occasion. This split CD was not intended as an introduction to these guys, since they have quite a few releases under their belt already.

Both have a common musical direction, death and doom metal, done with their own vision still. The Drowning can hardly hide their My Dying Bride influence, without exactly reaching the level of excellence set forth by the best doom metal act ever. I mean their music is pretty good in just about all respects, and they can come up with crushing tones on "Arc Light". Overall though, their sound is a bit generic. I found My Silent Wake more interesting. Opener "I Am (Eternity)" falls also into the generic trap though. Then follows a cool series of varied compositions. Starting with "Bleak Endless Winter"; a great piece of intensity filled with crunchy guitar work. To calm things down a little, "Devoid of Light" is a laid back tune with mandolin and acoustic guitars. To close their part of the split album, "Rebirth" came in as a great epic 23 minutes track. Reminiscent to vintage Pink Floyd with its eight minutes spacey intro, this long lasting please is showing a more metallic and progressive edge later on, as well as some twists & turns with ritualistic spoken words. My Silent Wake is definitely the winner in this duel, as far as I'm concerned.

Black Lights and Silent Roads will appeal to doom metal fans, no doubt about that.

Track listing:
My Silent Wake
1- I Am (Eternity)
2- Bleak Endless Winter
3- Devoid of Light
4- Rebirth
The Drowning
1- The Doomsday Feire
2- Arc Light
3- Silent Epiphany
4- A Photograph

Added: August 31st 2010
Reviewer: Denis Brunelle
Score:
Related Link: More Information
Hits: 2000
Language: english

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