Imprint Evidence Destiny

For those who were waiting for Empyrean Plague to choose a side and define themselves as regular melodic black metal or epic northern black metal, well, keep waiting. Various half-arsed influences are competing on this album, in a way that's just as lumpily blended as on their previous works. The band still hasn't flipped their coin and that stylistic tightrope is wearing thin.

The first two songs start with really catchy, heavy yet dark riffs. It will get you hoping that they've gone to the Sigh or Rotting Christ vein of melodic black metal. You know, songs that don't weaken or poppify the genre but truly understand putting tune above cacophonous rawness. Then both of these songs shift to boring-ass verse riffs of the lamest wannabe Viking variety. I don't mean to brush aside that sub-genre, which is cool when done right. EP's attempts at that rhythm guitar structure are just plodding, unimaginative and fully lacking the bounce of a good Viking metal verse.

"Northern Allegiance" and " A New Life Has Begun" attempt at building atmosphere with acoustic intros. Only the first one really pulls it off, because the tune played on electric guitar ties into that of the acoustic strumming properly. "New Life" just uses some gross forced tremolo lines and out-of-place blastbeats that are technically well played but aesthetically poorly placed. The added extremity does nothing to hold the mood that the slower, lighter bits tried to hold up. I will grant that these mood-squelching fast and heavy verses are backed up by some of the album's fastest bass, which is mostly buried elsewhere. 

So far in the guitar department, "Imprint Evidence Destiny" is not bad, just frustrating in that it shows glimpses of promise which always go unfulfilled. Salvageable, right? Well, "The Spore" is an admirable attempt to bail out this record's sinking ship of melody. Too bad Plague just can't help but ruin it. Here's a song with a mid-slow yet utterly captivating riff, matched and accented by trotting, occasionally blasting drums and rich crash and high-hat abuse strewn about everywhere! Then they throw in a totally superfluous lyric verse in the last 1:30 or so, including ghastly death metal vocals! Any newfound consistency of feeling and identity this song could have bestowed on the album is lost to that bonehead decision. Even worse is that your confusion over the vocals makes it hard to focus on the song as the album's best example of innovative, nearly-a-full-fledged-rhythm-guitar bass lines!

The only song that holds together every positive element the band could offer, is "As the Earth Decays". It opens with a fast rousing tune that matches some of Marduk's better offerings, and, for once, keeps both intensity and interest alive during the verse riff. Here alone on this album, do the guitarists, drummer and singer seem to be headed the same direction. No mismatched shrieked vocals over would-be Viking war march guitar leads. Just fist-pumping ferocious black metal through and through. Pummelling old school guitar lead, strong but not overwhelming double bass-heavy drum pattern, and appropriate that black metal vocals that finally carry some resonance! 

On the vocal point, there's variety here. But it's just confused variety, not the good interesting kind. Most of the time, there's your everyday mid-pitch raspy shriek. I'll admit that I do like how the voice is captured though. They pull down a wind-filtered, stormy type quality that's reminiscent of Branikald or Mutiilation, but not so over-the-top as to render the words inaudible. On the other hand, there are peeks of totally unwelcome death growling, most notably in "The Spore" as well as fouling up "Northern Allegiance". It's not that I'm against 'blackened death metal' but that's not what Empyrean Plague are about, so when the singer drops down it comes off as gimmicky.

For the closer "I Built a Bridge so You Could Cross", some clean singing appears too, which is a common ploy to create the epic side of Viking metal. This band doesn't pull it off though. Not even close. It sounds like nothing more than a weak Woods of Ypres ripoff, with none of the other group's personal spiritual impact on the listener. Seriously, forgettable acoustic picking, lame rainstorm samples, weird fake synth sounds and tired bland singing are not the right way to end a black metal album! 

"Imprint Evidence Destiny" is not much below their last album "Ancestral Embers Shall Burn". Its best song is better than the best of its predecessors, but sadly the same mishaps are still present. That, added to some brand new screwups and the expectation of improvement over a band's career, combine to push this one down. Where "Embers" was almost continuously average, this album ranges from slightly above average once, to terrible once, to generally unfocused.