The Extinct Dreams : Потустороннее сияние
The ugly caterpillar has transformed into a butterfly. The Extinct Dreams sound like a completely different band, as this second album has nothing to do with the first one, 'Ars Moriendi': it is as accomplished as the previous one was wasted. Two voices constantly collide on the album: the first one, clear and nasal, gives distressed and almost pathetic tremolos – it is also out of tune (a bit like the guy from Forest Of Shadows), and let you expect a sentimental album, mawkish at worst; the second voice dampens our fears: that’s a big fat raging growl.
The lyrics are in Russian and this, beyond the originality, brings a roughness and an interesting exoticism. They are also written in Cyrillic and therefore particularly undecipherable to a Western European... The riffs are very elegant, very aerial, very Slavic, one could say, punctuated by overwhelming arrangements, embellished with sour chords cut with the precision of an expert goldsmith; they ride in the sky, pulling the music to lyrical stratospheric heights, singing an ode to the night, full of bright hopes. The music takes its ease with assurance, stretches its melodic meanders in scattered notes which resonate in the liquid air. A few bass solos bring meat and fat to the band’s dark and distinguished elegies. It's extremely well done, full of turns, absolutely not monolithic as Otkroveniya Dozhdya can sometimes be, another band The Extinct Dreams make me think of. The musicians are full of resources and each track is different from the previous one, adding its share of original melancholy to the ambitious construction.
The band wonderfully uses ambient passages; there are many of them and they truly add an aura of mystery and a taste of long forgotten things. Diaphanous and light waves, bells tinkling with the softness of a last rale: so many interesting sounds in a Doom composition. A cello, deep and austere as it can be, has also a word to say. Much attention is given to these more appeased moments, when anger takes a breath; like a lull before the winds bring the hurricane back.
The Russians, however, never lose a certain end-of-reign languor, a bitter sadness that is musically strikingly illustrated. The affiliation with Mournful Congregation and ’The Monad Of Creation’ is obvious on the fourth song, which is exciting and a little disappointing too, as I would have liked a more fully personal album, although I must admit that the model is glorious and the imitation of quality.
The Extinct Dreams seem to be a new band, far from the grotesque stutterings and cacophonous erratic song-writing of their début. I listened to this album almost a dozen times and, for now, I predict some durable seduction from it. It is loaded with invention, subtle and powerful. Ïîòóñòîðîííåå ñèÿíèå (don't ask!) is an excellent Doom Death album, melodic, haunting and bitter, that hopefully will mark the true start of the band, a brilliant start for a brilliant future. Let’s hope so…
Reviewer's rating: Unrated
Источник: doom-metal.com
