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Falaise > A Place I Don't Belong To > Reviews > DementiaAccess
Falaise - A Place I Don't Belong To

The Blood Freezes... - 75%

DementiaAccess, June 15th, 2021

Before covering what I really like about this album, I'll get my one complaint out of the way; the songs are pretty samey and feel incomplete. The songs individually are great to listen to, but the entire album can be difficult to sit through unless you're really in the mood for it. When it comes to shoegazey black metal, I usually go for bands that are a bit less shoegaze and a bit more blackened, and this is almost a shoegaze album, but with harsh vocals and sometimes blast beats and tremolo riffs. The songwriting rarely strays from the similar path it sticks with throughout the album. Not that the songwriting is bad, but I was disappointed after having been initially drawn to it by the beautiful artwork on the album cover, which is absolutely gorgeous. The color palette is extremely pleasing, and the detailed sketchbook style perfectly represents the isolation and desolation expressed in the music. It isn't exactly an evil sense of melody, but there's definitely lots of juicy melancholia all over it, with lyrics that are brief and emotionally resigned poems that are sincere and avoid any unnecessary cheese or outlandish metaphors.

"Finding the force into something that is already dead.
People try to help, but words don't hurt or sweeten,
they just flow, like tears on my skin.

Not even home seems like home anymore..."


The intro is the best moment on the album, a delicate piano piece that really tugs at the heart strings, leading into what I think is the best full track on the album, "Once, My Home". The tracks "An Emptiness Full of You" and "Leaves In The Wind" also have some very moving piano sections. Adversely, the outro isn't quite as moving and not exactly rewarding to wait for, a choral piece that sounds synthesized, with a very bright tonality in direct opposition to the dark sentiments leading up to it. Not an ominous creepy brightness like the outro of the closing track on Opeth's "Watershed," it sounds more like the backing track to the happy ending of a romantic comedy. It was recorded nicely, though. The production adds a lot to the moody atmosphere of the album, especially the reverb-heavy juicy guitar leads that are draped over much of the album. Although a common element of this type of music, these leads really jump out at you like the burning sensation behind your eyes before a nice long bawl, rather than just fading into the background morosely like an eerily pleasant dream you can't remember.

Being a very big fan of atmospheric black metal, I wish I could like this album more than I do. I feel like maybe I've failed Falaise and I'm just not feeling it the right way, but after having given it more than several tries, it still leaves much to be desired. Although it would be a decent introduction to those who are just starting to get into atmospheric black metal, a relatively new but very deep and saturated style already, I would suggest several other artists before Falaise; Fen, Dystopia NĂ¥!, An Isolated Mind, Alcest, Amesoeurs, and even Deafhaven to name a few.