Embrace of Silence - Leaving the Place Forgotten by God
This is the first full-length record for the Ukraine’s Embrace of Silence, the follow-up to their Inspirational Songs EP. Leaving the Place Forgotten by God is a pretty punishing album. The brand of Doom/Death Metal that Embrace of Silence plays is kind of like the bastard offspring of Thergothon and My Dying Bride. It has the dark and heavy sound of My Dying Bride (including the occasional violin), but certain aspects, particularly the Swamp Thing vocals and the occasional delve into Black Metal territory remind me more of Thergothon. One odd thing I found about this album is that while none of the songs are exceptionally lengthy (the longest is almost eight minutes), they don’t feel like they’re all that long. I remember listening to this and thinking that the average song length was three to four minutes instead of five to seven minutes. Maybe my recollection on the length is skewed because they change things up quite a bit. Unlike a lot of Doom/Death Metal bands, Embrace of Silence doesn’t beat one riff into the floor or make a point of droning on and on and on. If this album has a weakness, though, it is in the more Death Metal oriented parts. The atmosphere they generate is ruined or weakened by the faster tempo, and the straight Death Metal bits that they do aren’t as distinctive. This isn’t a deal-breaker, though. There is still plenty of good stuff to counterbalance the small imperfections that Leaving the Place Forgotten by God has. For a first album, this is definitely above average. I’m looking forward to hearing future releases from Embrace of Silence with great eagerness. If they can build on this, we’ll be talking about these guys for years to come.
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