Crescent Lament

At first, I was somewhat hesitant to contact Crescent Lament to ask if they would be interested in a review, seeing I had some bad listening experiences with bands described as Black/Gothic Metal. In most cases this description means it is in fact just Black Metal with some sparsely used Female vocals and/or some cheesy keyboard melodies thrown in the mix. And to be honest, in general, I don’t like black metal at all (with a few exceptions maybe). Seeing that the band members are not corpse-painted finally made me decide to give it a try, and I’m glad I did.

The music is really best described as an evil sounding form of Gothic Metal. There is much use of the keyboard, but it is used in a good way (i.e. it does not sound cheesy at all). Lets start at the beginning though. The demo starts out with a sad piano melody, which is joined by a thumping drum and crushing guitar riff, before the vocals kick in. The song starts out in a quite slow, almost Doom Metal, fashion. But in the middle part the Black Metal elements kick in with fast guitar playing and drumming. Instead of an intro, the demo consists of a interlude, aptly called “Interim”. The song is a two minute instrumental keyboard peace, which functions as the “eye of the storm” on the demo, giving the listener some peaceful notes between the two actual songs.

After the interlude, “Danse Macabre” starts out in full gear, with a nice melodic guitar lead supported by an atmospheric keyboard melody. The song then heads in bombastic and symphonic territory, mainly caused by the choir used. The song speeds up a bit, before a calm middle part with a piano melody and a Doom Metal tempo, which gradually speeds up until they reach their Black Metal speed again.

There are no black metal vocals to be found at all on this demo. Most vocals are handled by female vocalist Muer, who has a beautiful (and clean) style of singing. There are some supporting male vocals, but they are rather a Death Metal grunt than a Black Metal shriek.

This demo was a nice surprise to me. The band has written some excellent songs, which are quite varied and range from Gothic to Doom to Black Metal passages, without sounding chaotic or unfocused.