Serpent's Embrace

This is just another well produced goth/black album. It's riddled with all kind of Cradle Of Filth effects and the songs are written like a Cradle Of Filth album. I suppose the thing that separates this album from Cradle Of Filth is that it also kind of sounds like Dimmu Borgir. Needless to say, it's not very original.

Well, this album is certainly well produced. The guitars hit hard, the double kick hits hard, and the vocals (through the use of various effects I'm sure) sound like vicious and angry snarls. The truth of the matter however, is that there's generally no creativity within the riffs or the song structure. The only thing that makes this album an enjoyable listen (or a bearable listen really) is the atmosphere. The vocals are nice, the effects and drums give it a hard hitting sound that's good to listen to loudly as background music, but when you sit down and analyze it there's nothing special here. The songs are built so that the guitars play chords while the keyboards play the leads, not the other way around. That's not very metal of them.

Having said that, there's like four good riffs on this CD. One of them begins Light Reborn, which is probably the only song besides The Darkness Inside worth mentioning. The introduction is pretty promising, the first verse is a little less promising, and then we're hit hard by keyboards and Dimmu Borgir like clean vocals. The song just loses momentum quickly after the first riff. They try to experiment with the whole Between The Buried And Me / Outworld style mood changes but it ends up just killing the song instead of ending the repetition and really working. You guys want to learn how to change the mood successfully? Listen to WarCry by Outworld.

The Darkness Inside is a fairly decent song actually. Nice little guitar harmony introduction, plenty of Amon Amarth worship, and a nice growled chorus featuring epic guitar work and equally complimentary drumming. It settles down during the verses and uses the computer / keyboard effects a little too much to fill the void, but then it goes back to the epic chorus. As usual though, instead of ending the song where they should, they add a little bridge and then repeat what they've already overdone to make it longer.

Overall, this album's probably worth avoiding. There's only two songs really truly worth mentioning here. The production's great, and the effects (if they would use them tastefully) would be great too. There's not many riffs or original ideas on this album though, and it just drags on and on way too much.