The Passage Back to Life

Croatian Ashes You Leave seems to be one of the most heard metal bands from ex- Yugoslavia, outside of domestic boundaries. Often compared with My Dying Bride simply as their rip-off, and also with early Theatre Of Tragedy as their boring grey-side, it's unbelievable for many people how this band suceeded outside of Croatia, because there is surely a lot of much better and inventiable bands.
"The Passage Back To Life" is AYL's first album, in so many other reviews often seen as their worst release by the total lack of inventiability. Yes, "The Passage Back To Life" is album who's songwriting is totally addicted to MDB's "Turn Loose The Swans", but the madmans like me goes too far and proclaim this album as Ashes You Leave best! This is one of these good albums with very little dose of originality. This is far, far away from brilliant, but it's very tasteful and close to be called interesting. Why if almost more than a half of these downtuned heavy riffs from this album sounds like criminaly stolen directly from "Turn Loose The Swans", also the famous violin-lines? The main reason why I found this album interesting is the soprano vocals (with some folky vibe somethimes), and this album could be the right choice if you ever wander how would My Dying Bride sounds if they ever had a female singer. At least, "The Passage Back To Life" have some really strong moments. For example, the first half of the "Lay Down Alone" - surely the best part of the album... But, unfortunately, later this track also goes towards simple MDB cloning somwhere in the middle of the track where comes the typical Aaronesque growl supported with also typical MDB riffing and violins.
After all, on this album, even without too much originality Ashes You Leave suceeded to create very strange and interesting dark atmosphere, that sounds, for paradox, very unique. You can hear this after some listenings, when you get a little deeper into this album. "The Passage Back To Life" looks like a pretty solid debut album for a promising underground band, but sadly, Ashes You Leave ruined their potentials on their latest releases. It is unfortunate how they later didn't continued to develop better their sound and trying to find a originality in this strong and heavy death/doom vein from "The Passage Back To Life", which is much more suitable for them. Instead, they developed their sound much worse towards the mediocre sounding operatic - gothic metal in Theatre Of Tragedy/ Tristania area. The final result from that long road is a totaly embarassing disaster called "Fire". Sadly lost band.