Times And Unknown Waters

As I was dusting off old promos, and as I ended up my Burning Point review (one of many album on the I've-never-gonna-find-time-to-review-all-this pile), I came across that CD, and it rang a bell... or at least, triggered an old memory, like this one I had to do it for some reasons. So I deceide to pop it up my cd player and see why this album was suddently calling for me (thus stopping me from putting some order in the chaos that my room is these days). So what do we have here ? After a very calm and soothing intro, hello growly vocals a la Eternal Tears Of Sorrow (and/or Brimstone). But Blazing Eternity is not one more melodic death metal (they don't even belong to that category, despite what we could think after 2-3 minutes of music) band that makes you wish that the vocals were clean. Even though I ABSOLUTELY love melodic death metal vocals à la Norther, COB and the such now, I sometimes get the feeling that bands like Skyfire could sound even better with Power Metal like vocals... but yet again I like their albums a lot the way they are. Let's get back to Blazing Eternity, this very talented band from Denmark. Actually the melodic Death resemblance stops at the vocals... they are much more groovy instrumentally, and not fast-as-shark melodic like the previously mentionned bands. They also mixes clean and growly vocals. Nothing wrong except that the clean vocals are a tad too sissy if you ask me, especially that the dark vocals are quite to my taste (powerfull and angry enough). So in the end I would have done just fine without the clean vocals, though it might have taken some of Blazing Eternity's souls with it I guess. At first glance you can conclude : only 8 songs ? ... but hell songs are quite long (6 to 10 minutes), with a phantom track bringing the last song to a length up to 23 minutes (but it has like 10 minutes of silence). Songs have a very original song-writing, draining inspiration from a wide variety of metal style with beautifully executed breaks in the middle (even in the beginning sometimes) of the songs, accentuating their originality in matters of song writing with the use of accoustic instruments. They truly have a reached a perfect balance between progressive and melodic death metal, setting themselves apart from other bands of the such with masterfully written songs. The accoustic parts are really beautiful, especially the instrumental track Manden med den sorte hat (or somethin' :)) A refreshing sound that could easily get better by ditching the clean sissy (most of the time spoken only) vocals. But hopefully angry vocals really leads the way (85%). I haven't heard of these guys since that promo, I hope they are still around, they have lots of good moments and a really impressive progressive song-writing ability... all they would need is some better balance between the vocals (why not add a female vocals for clean parts ? would really bring the "Iron Fist in a Velvet Glove" kinda feeling to their sound). Just a thought. Anyway, great album and sadly easily overlooked (I sure did, mea culpa). If you like progressive metal & melodic stuff with angry vocals (Opeth, Pain Of Salvation,...), then this album has truely been tailored for you ! Give them a try, you won't be disappointed.