Amidst Her Shadows

Initial Impression: If someone had came up to me two weeks ago and told me this idea I would have laughed in their face. I never thought you could get two obviously combustible elements to work together, but I would have been W-R-O-N-G! Clad in Darkness is...yes...a band which combines elements of Black Metal with Opeth styled acoustic segments and riffing.

The Release: This is a truly impressive release by a band that shows serious promise in metal. This is also the first overly positive review I've given on metal-archives.com! Raise your heads up high gentlemen, I'm not an easy listener to please, just read my other reviews. As much as I would love to just let go and give this album the 100% and clarify it as hands down the best EP I have ever heard I must try to be unbiased here. BM elitists/purists will HATE this album, as will fans of Death Metal and Thrash. This is actually an album which really will appeal to fans of Opeth, and other bands of that nature. No the unfortunate thing here is that sometimes the band sounds a little to much like Opeth, which isn't a real problem for me but I could see how some people would find it annoying, hence I detracted two points for the sake of professionalism.

The release itself is very dark and sorrowful, something Opeth doesn't always do right but this band seems to have done a pretty damn good job for having only two releases under their belts. They must have some extremely talented musicians. The band has also taken away an extremely annoying aspect of Opeth out of the equation, alot of times Opeth tends to draw things on for too long. Certain segments of Opeth songs can get too repetitive and cheesy, something Clad in Darkness manages to avoid. The songs aren't as overly long as Opeth, some songs have some length to them but they manage to keep it from getting ridiculous, the songs manage to remain fresh and new as you listen to them, adding to the releases repeatability.

Vocals: The Vocals switch from harsh, sorrowful Black Metal vocals to melodic and strangely inhuman sounding clean vocals which add to the overall dark and sad feeling of the release. The vocals only help to draw you into the art and in a split second rip you apart in harsh Black Metal segments.

Guitars: The guitar is pretty damn good. Not your typical minimalist approach but they keep it relatively simple. There are alot of aggressive BM/Opeth styled distorted parts which usually have a more melodic guitar line being played over the other more crushing guitar line. The melodic guitar line again, serves to draw in a darker atmosphere. The acoustic parts are brilliantly written and help set the tone of the particular song and are kept simple and melodic. There are even more 70's styled guitar solos played using an undistorted clean electric guitar.

Bass: Unfortunately this can be a little hard to pick up sometimes. But from what I have heard there are definitely some good bass lines to be found here as well.

Drums: The drum work is damn very impressive. The drumming will definitely remind you of Opeth. The big difference here is that the band has a larger focus on blast-beats and double bass work on the heavier parts.

Lyrics; I've had a big problem in the past with bands trying to be poetic. But they do manage to pull it off! The lyrics are very poetic and well written; the lyrics fit the dark atmosphere of the album well.

Production: Very well produced for an unsigned band! No one instrument drowns out the other and the vocals fit in well with the rest of the band. Poor production had become a personal enemy of mine in recent years. Not just Black Metal's raw production style, but the inability to listen to certain parts of the release due to horrible production drowning it out.

Overall: I would love to sit here and state many more positive things about this band, but I prefer to keep it simple and to the point. All-in-all, this is an EP I would highly recommend everyone to listen to and at least give a chance. I'm definitely going to order this EP off their website and try to get my hands on the other one as well.

Final Score: 98