Semeïon

Randomly browsing through the Internet is always a good way to find new music and that’s basically how I found this death metal band called “Dylath-Leen”. What caught my attention was the “Atmospheric Death Metal” tag they had at various websites and well, a tag like that sounds really attractive to me. But what you’ll hear here is nothing that you might expect from that tag, at least from my point of view.

When I hear the word “Atmospheric” in metal, the only thing I can think of is Drudkh, Bathory and Burzum and their awesome guitar work, but what Dylath-Leen delivers has nothing to do with that. To me, this sounds like a mixture of gothic and death metal, taking the harmonic and symphonic feeling from gothic, mixing it with the speed and anger of death. This might sound unique, but to me it sounds like an angrier version of the early “beauty and the beast-gothic bands” that appeared during the ’90s.

Instrumental-vise I’m not the best person to ask, but personally I find nothing really that complex here. The guitar work sounds like the generic gothic metal, with frequent death metal grinds but part from that, there’s nothing unique to it. The drum and bass are given to little space, they are present, but there’s nothing special to them. The only instrument worth mentioning in my opinion is the keys that are present at some of the tracks; they build a rather pleasant atmosphere and is really the only thing I deem worthy to be called “atmospheric” here.

Moving on to the vocals, what we get here is a mix of male and female vocals, but not as one might think. No, it’s not the gothic “beauty and the beast-complex”, if we’ve to say anything like that it’s “the ghost-monster and the beast”. The female vocals by Kathy vary from growling to banshee-screams and are probably my favorite part of the whole album. She mixes the both very well, sometimes blending them into some “growly-banshee” mix, which I really like. Igor also delivers some growls, but he’s to me, nothing out of the ordinary; solid enough for this album. And lyrically it’s about H.P Lovecraft and well… I’m not that familiar with his work so I’m not really going to judge them, but they do fit into the music in my opinion.

All in all, this album is solid at maximum, somewhat unique and might be worth a listen. Maybe I was to hyped over the “Atmospheric Death Metal” tag and if I take my time and listen to it again in a few months I might enjoy it more than I did now, but for now, this just isn’t my cup of tea.

Highlights
“Frozen Reflect in a Broken Mirror”, “Abhoth” and “In Memory of Those Halcyon Days”. These were easily the best tracks, as they feature some of that atmosphere I was hoping for and are the few tracks where the instruments really stand out, especially the drums. “In Memory…” is probably the best of them, with a killer intro that reminds me of Vinterlands “A Vinter Breeze” (a black metal band from Sweden).