Review: 03.2007
BY BLOOD ALONE - Eternally (Jericho Hill)
Goth plus Metal, with dignity!!!!
What the Hell? I really do mean, what the Hell? Most old Goths like me have a simple reaction to Goth Metal. We want to explain that's what part of what we wanted to get away from. As the decades unfold Goth ingredients, of course, become as natural an influence as anything else for people who have grown up with different sounds, and much cooler if they prefer something stylish to hoary metal clichés. In other cases things circle around, and people confident enough in their own obsessions happily share those with others, so that this band, with a blend of Goth and Rock of the Metal variety, work together creating something caught starkly, and seductively, in the middle. These are people experienced in various bands, cosily entwined through happy accident.
"Every Night" gets this old (2005) EP, sent to me as a taster for their album due this year, off to a flying, flustered, start with its petticoats rustling down a big staircase as the keyboards and guitar fraternise. The sternly clipped female vocals drag you into their tale of flight, and the rocky tune is extended, without flash, working as a rough noise smoothed down, almost poppy in its insistence, the keyboard's embers kicked up and circulating. The guitar is a bit extreme towards the end with an absurd solo but at least it's deeply embedded and in a way this is Xandria, only more dignified.
'"Eternally" itself is beautiful, with a pristine vocal performance, the guitar spindly and discreet, and sounding like a big sister of Dyonisis with that measured delivery. It takes it time, with such sweetly uplifting melodic touches you'll be enchanted. "Darkman" is doomier, its mirror opposite, lumbering over flatlining drums and misery-drenched guitar with the lyrics wielded as art-poetry, rotting in a shaded corner but with humble female vocal imploring which really captivates. You don't even mind the guitar outburst. It's another lovely, peculiar song.
"Deny Yourself" finishes by galloping round in a circle like a demented cowboy and the song is barnstorming pop-rock which gets a bit tedious as they swoon and loll, but there's no denying doesn't really sound like anybody else at the moment, because this is wholly their own collision. And an enjoyable one.