As Light DiesThe title gives the game away. This album is a work of “progressive, dark, avant-garde metal “based in all the horror, pain and grief which involves all love stories”. This is reinforced by a contrived conversation between a man and woman with commentary the accompaniment of a melancholic sounding piano.”We are All Destined for Grief”, it’s called. That’s told us. It all seems very intense.

A melodic piece of gothic metal follows and captures a lot of what this ambitious album is about. Each track heads off loosely in a progressive sort of way. “Orpheus Mourning” and what follows has the texture of a metal opera or musical. The drumming is intense and the guitar patterns are sophisticated and flamboyant. Growls and plaintive clean vocals interject for what I guess is intended as dramatic effect but they just sounded false to me. The album proceeds in similar vein, with urgency, growls, instrumental flamboyancy, colourful riffs and break-offs for harsh, melancholic, soft and various other types of vocal style which you might associate with a progressive concept album. Oh, and a few further intense conversations and samples. At times it is utterly dark and heavy. The vocalist on “Nemesis”, one of the better tracks with more cohesion and impact than most, sends a dark wave of gloom through the sheer heaviness and nightmarish qualities which surround it. But I spend most of my time wondering what was going on and concluding that ambitious progressive as it is, it’s a lot of smoke and no fire. I didn’t get the theme or concept by listening to it, and the gloomy spoken parts and samples don’t sound natural. The sound blend is strange and didn’t help me to get any feeling for this album at all.

I just didn’t get the surreal world of As Light Dies, I’m afraid. Instrumentally, “The Love Album Volume 1” has urgency and colour but overall this album for me was like an outfit that doesn’t match. I have no desire to listen to Volume 2, based on my experience of this album.

(3.5/10 Andrew Doherty)

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