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Solace Of Requiem - Solace Of Requiem
"This album was recorded during a 10 hour session, the culmination of 12 months of writing". That's a brave thing to say. Most albums take weeks or months to get recorded, not to mention the weeks of editing. That line alone made me curious. If you claim to be a technical, progressive death metal band and you record your first album in 10 hours, it must be good! right?

Solace of Requiem hail from the American state of Virginia, and the three guys have known eachother since they were in their early teens. The music itself can be best described as late 80's/early 90's death metal, mixed up with modern influences. In the first song, for example, we run into an almost hardcore-like breakdown, with a typical short guitarriff combined with some double bass drumming. Their bio speaks of "jazz" influences, but I was hard-pressed to really find those. I was expecting Cynic or Atheist kind of moments, but unfortunately they weren't there. In my opinion, I think the jazzy part reflects to the overal songstructures. It's riff upon riff, making it a linear expierence. You can probably mix all the songs together into one big epic tune, since any repeating structure within a song is hard to find. I did spot some cool bass leads; you don't here those often these days.

The production is so-so, but if you look at it from the other side, it's pretty good for just a 10 hour session. It wouldn't suprise me if the band played the songs directly as a 3 piece, instead of laying down drumtracks first, etc. You can here some tiny mistakes and timing issues, but you'll really have to pay attention to pick those out.

Two of the stand-out songs are It Feeds and Left Blinded. It Feeds would be a great track to check out if you don't know the band, it has some pretty neat riffs and the melodic bass work impressed me quite a bit. I also chose Left Blinded because it's a pretty groove-oriented tune, and has a great melodic guitar solo, followed by a "moshy" riff. Some nice dynamics overall.

I have to say that this cd wasn't able to keep my attention the whole way through. Some songs sounded overstretched to me, and could easily be a minute shorter to keep things a bit more fresh. If all the songs were as dynamic as the two mentioned above, it would have kept my ears focused. Most of the songs have the same mid-paced tempo, only having occasional double-time parts to spice things up a little. This results into a technically impressive but musically 'tedious' effort. Check it out if you like old, not too fast Death Metal.

Solace of Requiem is:
Jeff Sumrell - Bass, Vocals
Chris Young - Guitars
Luke Downing - Drums

Tracklisting:
1 - Beyond Grace
2 - Trials
3 - It Feeds
4 - Deceiver
5 - Stir No Echo
6 - The Ocean North
7 - On to Unreal
8 - Left Blinded
9 - Hell Is For Those Who Sleep
10 - I Need You* (Grave Cover)
Solace Of Requiem - Solace Of Requiem
69/1001Details independent
Released on Tuesday Nov 30th, -0001
death metal

Writer @Carn on Wednesday Mar 23rd, 2005

Tags: #Solace Of Requiem
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