Ian Arkley formed My Silent Wake in 2005. For all you metalheads, Ian has played with Seventh Angel, Ashen Mortality, Paramaecium and a couple of other acts as well. This split with The Drowning is great! The first 4 songs belong to My Silent Wake and each one is very different from the other. The first track “I Am Eternity” is a slow, mournful dirge that will get stuck in your head for days. “Bleak Endless Winter” is the second track and is more middle of the road metal with vocals that are growled and spit at you over wailing guitars and thumping bass lines, but the pace changes several times through this song as well making it very unique. The third track is “Devoid of Light” and it is very mellow, quiet and vocally sparse letting the music really convey some emotion while perfectly setting up the last song “Rebirth” which comes in at over 23 minutes long. “Rebirth” starts with an atmospheric bass line accompanied by various ambient sounds, increases to a very droning melancholic mid section and ends with a heavier guitar based structure while repeating the same lines over and over, and then closing with a spoken word… sonically it is very, very pleasing.
While starting out with 4 such solid tracks, The Drowning had their work cut out for them on the split disc. These guys are also along the same lines of gothic gloom and death metal, but where My Silent Wake was more melodic, The Drowning is crunchier, heavier and employs death metal vocals on every track. What I love about these four songs is that there is the heaviness and the stand out guitar work, the gravel of the vocals, and then this heavy, thick desolate ambience that really encompasses the entire sound. The songs are “The Doomsday Feire” followed by “Arc Light”, “Silent Epiphany” and then ending with “A Photograph” which chops back and forth between spoken vocals and death metal growls.
This is a highly recommended disc that is will wet your appetite for gloom, doom and gothic metal, and then leave you begging for more.
[2010 Bombworks Records | Purchase: BombworksRecords.com]
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