Toward the Castle

Please disregard any comparisons to Burzum or Xasthur that you may hear. "Toward The Castle," while technically atmospheric black metal, does not even remotely resemble either.

Fear of Eternity, a one man band from Italy, is all about keyboards on this album. Keyboards take the lead in every track on the album, and the unremarkable fuzzily distorted guitars (and occasional clean arpeggiating) are there simply to provide atmosphere and depth. There is no lead guitar on this album. The vocals are reptilian and chilly, also unremarkable, yet fitting to the instrumentation. Each song follows a formula: keyboard intro, relaxed tempo drum machine entrance, programmed bass, more keyboards for about a minute, and the guitar/vocals entrance. Production value is quite high yet clearly low-budget going by the variety (read: lack thereof) of organic keyboard sounds and cheap synthesized bass.

The general feel to "Toward The Castle" is rather neutral. The keyboards, programmed to sound like church bells, chimes, cellos, string ensembles, are jangly and often similar to the "gothic fantasy" side of video game background music composition. A layer of frost is added with guitars and vocals, but the listener's attention is almost always on the keyboard leads, which are in fact not so much "lead" as "more atmosphere." There are only two exceptions to this general rule. First is the first full song, "Flying Over The Mountains," which starts with an upbeat bass/drum machine/keyboard passage that could easily lead into a goth-inspired pop song. The second is the outro passage, "Illusion of Purity," an ambient instrumental that belongs in a video game.

Overall, I give "Toward The Castle" a 70/100. It was suggested to me by someone who compared Fear of Eternity to Vordven and Sorcier des Glaces, two frosty lo-fi atmospheric black metal bands of the late 1990s which used ambient keyboards rather liberally. While "Toward The Castle" is very pleasant and sometimes succeeds in the crafting of beautiful atmospheric soundscapes, it lacks the coldness and ferocity that the band logo, album art, and most importantly, songwriting, all try to convey.