This one is an old acquaintance. It dates back to the now remote days when, living in Japan, I was thinking about this paradox of being a person of Latin culture, lost there and listening to fellow Latin people singing, precisely, about Japanese culture. Or, to write it less cryptic, here is Persefone, the one and only Andorran metal band of international reputation, dealing for the duration of an album with the figure of the samurai, probably the most iconic character of Japanese History.
This iconic character you may play shiny and epic, like Whispered, or you may play tough, like Gotsu Totsu Kotsu; Persefone, faithful to their progressive roots, chose to play it intellectual, basing their work on the life and thoughts of famous 17th-Century swordsman and philosopher Miyamoto Musashi. Concept album of the purest breed, Shin-ken will thus be packed with long sequences of melodic death metal battles, regularly interrupted by contemplative interludes titled after Miyamoto's Book of Five Rings, up to a twisted ending in the form of a, largely re-appropriated, Cacophony cover. A semi-acoustic ballad, the pivotal Purity, approximately divides the work in two.
That was for the structure. Concerning the content, that's mostly Persefone showing once and for all their muscles, to oscillate between the temptation of metalcore, on the one side, and the temptation of tech death, on the other side, without ever openly embracing either side to keep it reasonably melodic. These big chugging riffs and boar growls, which regularly resurface and will never win my favour I'm afraid, betray the former temptation. Coming to the latter, suffice to say the guys have recorded here several of the most brutal bars in their entire career, while drummer Marc Mas Marti, without being exactly George Kollias, nonetheless makes no secret of his desire to destroy his drumkit every couple of songs. Destruction work he, most remarkably, manages to perform with the almost complete absence of blastbeats runs; that's the mark of a great man.
Of course they had to keep it progressive, whatever the term exactly means, if only to match the complex brains of their hero; in other words, they had to display as much dexterity for juggling their instruments as Miyamoto displayed for juggling his two swords. Let's call the result sophisticated chaos, unless it is chaotic sophistication. This to prevent the listener from ever settling in a comfort zone. No easy structure, no easy riffing, always evolving, changing, and jostling. Watch your back, even when sitting in the dry garden: the enemy is everywhere, thus the lengthy, and ubiquitous, solos, consist in as many raging guitar/guitar and guitar/keyboard duels where the instruments constantly taunt each other, fight, intermingle. It can also hold its breath, at times. The Endless Path offers a perfect example of the unstable equilibrium, the images of the floating world we're moving in, with its mid-tempo majestic intro and pompous clean vocals breaks contrasting with the perpetual struggle the rest of the song consists in. Meanwhile, staying true to their titles, Death Before Dishonor and Rage-stained Blade don't embarrass themselves with so much subtlety, performing their carnage from the first bar to the last.
Lone island of stability, Purity is the only fully straightforward, only fully soft, and, as a matter of fact, the most important, song, even though it isn't the best. Lost in the immensity of Nature the protagonist reflects on his tormented self; for once the human, not the unforgiving blade, is at the heart. An ambitious program, which would have required a top-class clean vocalist to carry it on his shoulders, and let's admit the man here somehow lacks of inner strength to perfectly fulfil the task. His melodramatic style works well in small doses to add an epic flavour to the otherwise harsher moments, not so much as the focal point of a vocals-driven piece.
Let's further admit the album as a whole, after the initial blazing run, falls a bit short of breath in its final tier. The complex Kusanagi tries to reproduce the miracle of The Endless Path, but fails at totally convincing; certainly not a bad piece, only slightly too long, slightly too progressive in the clichéd way (these piano arpeggios...), when compared to its efficient predecessors. The two-parts title track, which follows, is a weird case as well. Conceptually-wise it makes perfect sense – and remember concept is primordial here: after one last, paroxysmic burst of violence, all of a sudden the protagonist finally finds the inner peace he had been chasing all throughout. The second part thus consists in another long clean-vocals and piano-driven meditation on top of which the theme from Purity resurfaces, if the meaning wasn't obvious enough. In strict terms of adrenaline regulation, that's frustrating, but why not. In any case the album should, logically, have closed on that one and its slow, epic final. Yet it had to go on with the last of the five books, THEN the soundscapes of Japanese Poem, THEN the Cacophony cover. Let's assume that one doesn't count; still, wouldn't it have been wiser to fuse at least the three successive meditative tracks into a single, and shortened, one?
Minor complaints, that won't shake the whole edifice too deeply. Comes the end of the military-philosophical journey, if Persefone triumphs, that's because they primarily focused on transcribing the bushido spirit through their own, typically Western ways, rather than trying to appear more Japanese than the Japanese themselves, an attitude which would only have led to ridicule. Touches of flute and percussion in the interludes and outro, a haiku whispered in the original language at the end of Purity, and that's pretty much all for the folklore. The cover art itself, eventually, looks neither particularly Eastern, neither particularly Western, more abstract than descriptive, to set the emphasis on the true hero here – the Sword. The Sword which for more than one hour cuts deep and sharp, and that's all that matters.
Highlights: Death Before Dishonour; The Endless Path; Rage-Stained Blade
The first time I listened to Persefone I couldn't understand exactly what was going on in their music. And that's because of the very complex songs that they build. It is a music that takes some time to get accustomed to. Shin-Ken makes no exception, but it is slightly easier to catch. It was the first album that I heard from the band and I believe anybody should start with this one. More precisely with the song "Kusanagi". This album is a bit darker than the latest albums and therefore heavier. It brings awesome heavy rhythm patterns, that are a trademark to Persefone and heavy growls to really impact the listener.
Persefone are also known to choose lyrical themes that aren't exactly metal specific. They like to exit the box and try something new and original. And Shin-Ken does just that. This time the band chooses Samurai ideology as the concept for the album. And what a concept it is. This choice affects the album a lot. It creates a yin-yang feel to the whole album. A samurai needs both the strength and rage in battle to give him power but also peace of mind. And these are the two sides of the album. The harsh vocals, heavy guitars, and the drums help bring that power to build the yang side of the album, while the yin comes from keyboards, clean guitars and clean vocals.
The harsh vocals do a lot of alternation with the clean resulting in sudden shifts in the atmosphere. Another cool effect that the harsh vocals bring is the occasional heavy low growl backing a high pitched scream. Despite being quite muddy and hard to distinguish at times, the harsh vocals are a very important element of the album. The guitar solos are another important part of the album. This album has a very specific sound, even compared to other Persefone albums, and I believe that comes a lot from the lead guitars but also from the piano sections that interrupt on occasions all the rage that comes from the guitars and harsh vocals. The drums are also heavy and powerful, with blast beats all over the place. The fast blast beat sound is another trademark of the album, and the drums section also brings lots of fun and catchy tempo changes. The heavy side of this album is like one face to the album and is felt best in songs like "Kusanagi", "Death Before Dishonour" and "Rage Stained Blade".
The more melodic part of the album comes in songs like "The Endless Path", "Purity", or the books. And each of these songs are very unique. "The Endless Path" speaks of the endless training that a samurai warrior goes through. And in someway, those years of training are also a part of every musicians life. This song seems to be more personal to the band. Purity is another jewel on the album. It is the only song to show only clean vocals. It is piano based but also shows two lovely melodic guitar solos. The books are another consequence of the concept. If you want to see what I mean take a look at the track list. You will see a song for each of the elements in Samurai philosophy. And I really love this idea. These songs are also those slower songs where you can catch a break from all the rage in the album. I like the fire book best. It has the noise of a fire in the background and it features a slow piano and a sad, almost dramatic female voice. It feels like you can see a burning forest when listening to it. And the rage of "Kusanagi" follows soon after. And in many ways this album creates images.
The title track is the best way to understand what this album is about. It is an 11 minute two part epic track. The first part is really energetic and it takes ideas from every song on the album. It also has only harsh vocals. The second part is another piano based song and it has only clean vocals. For me, this is the best song on the album.
Shin-Ken is probably the catchiest album from Persefone, and if you've never listened to this band, this is the best album to start with. It has everything a progressive metal album needs. Give it a shot.
This album has an awesome album cover. Now, onto the music itself.
First off, this album is incredibly varied. From the 5 songs that personify a book of some sort, to the crazy shredding and melodies of Kusanagi, Fall to Rise, The Endless Path, and Rage Stained Blade, to the wonderful piano of Purity, Shin-Ken Part 2, and Japanese Poem, it just keeps on changing. The "book" songs are generally immediate follow-ups to the songs before them with no distinct change from the end of the previous song. They mostly feature some piano, some nature-like sound effects, and a Japanese instrument whose name eludes me at the moment, but it is fairly recognizable. There isn't exactly anything spectacular about them and nothing incredibly memorable to make you specifically want to listen to that song, but when you actually ARE listening to them at the moment, you are absorbed in the sound. They are The Ground, Void, Water, Fire, and Wind books.
Persefone is mainly death metal I think because there are many songs off this album that would disagree, such as a WONDERFUL song, Purity. It has great lyrics, a great solo, still some metal-like riffs, but stays true to its calm nature. The instrumental, Japanese Poem, speaks for itself, staying away from metal and just delivering a rainy day next to the Shinto gate, looking out upon a gorgeous landscape. Honestly, that's how I felt while listening to it. For all the non-metal songs on here, the lyrics sound perfectly fitting and there is nothing wrong with it, and might I add that they sound much better than the lyrics off of the pounding, yet great metal songs.
The best metal song on the album, Kusanagi, features some AWESOME riffs, great shredding, cool piano, nice melodies, and then the lyrics come around. I can't for the life of me understand what they are saying. Although in its defense it's screamo, so I'm not exactly supposed to, right? But that's besides the point. There are two types of screaming on this album: growly and actual SCREAMING. The screaming portions are fairly good, usually accompanied by the lesser part of the music, the ones with the crazy fast, pounding drum beat that I have always stoutly believed is not needed in any song. Then the pounding would stop and you're back to normal growly lyrics with a fantastic sound playing around it. That's mainly the pattern for the songs Fall To Rise, which is a fine song, and Rage Stained Blade, which isn't truly memorable, but still good. Shin-Ken Part 1 is very, VERY fast, although there are fortunately few pounding parts with a rather large amount of growly lyrics, but the overall composition is good.
What the metal off of this album has going for it the most, however, is the quality of the guitar playing. From basic metal riffs from Kusanagi to the super-crazy-insane-mega-awesome shred-tastic soloing off of The Endless Path and Shin-Ken, the guitar never fails to please. The drums go with it very well (except for the pounding parts, might I add) and occasionally is backed by that nice Japanese instrument I mentioned earlier that I still cannot name. You can headbang, you can air guitar, you can pretend to sing along, you can dance, you can do whatever you want with the actual MUSIC of this album because its just that great.
Shin-Ken is awesome. I love it. I don't like the lyrics very much, although they are fairly great on SOME portions of SOME of the metal songs. Other than that, it's merely tolerable with the lyrics off of the mellow songs being pretty sick. All in all, I would say get it.
The third album by the Andorran progressive metallers Persefone shows a steep development in the band's presentation. With my introduction to the band being through the band's second work 'Core', it is difficult not to compare the two, but for the first time, Persefone appears to have finally achieved a production value that properly showcases their talents as a band. Sound like a somewhat more extreme version of Symphony X or Dream Theater with 'Shin-Ken', Persefone appears to have changed up their sound to accommodate the less underground approach, and while it may lack the same strength as 'Core', Persefone has conjured another great album with 'Shin-Ken'.
An album notably themed with Far East and oriental motifs, 'Shin-Ken' adopts many traits that one would typically find in most concept albums. A running sense of musical flow, recurring musical ideas, and an epic scope of ambition fuels Persefone here. Certainly a promising set-up by any standard, but in their transition to a more typical prog metal sound, they do seem to have lost part of what I originally found so endearing in them. Instead of the melancholic riffs and dark, complex compositions that I first heard Persefone play on 'Core', things are much more typical of mainline prog metal. This will not necessarily be a bad thing for all listeners, but as someone who really enjoyed their heavier death metal sound, it would have been nice to hear a little more edge from these guys.
The more streamlined nature of 'Shin-Ken' aside, Persefone does some great things with this modified style. Finally now through some solid production standards, one can hear the band play heavily, softly and everything in between without the muffling effect the weaker production values had in the past. The heavy parts feel somewhat tame here, although Persefone is a big winner when it comes to technical moments. The band is common to kick into a burstfire keyboard solo or soulful guitar lead at the peak of their intensity on 'Shin- Ken', then lapse into a mellow section. As has been typical for these guys, Persefone writes and performs their mellow moments with great beauty. Although some of the interlude pieces here feel somewhat unnecessary to the overall flow of the record, 'Shin-Ken's strength lies in the moments where they let the melody take over.
All in all, Persefone's 'Shin-Ken' is a winner, if not the glorious masterpiece other listeners have made it out to be. New wave keyboards, guitar solos, heavy riffs and interludes aplenty give Persefone a big resonance with the Dream Theater fan inside of me, but for all of its grand improvements, I am still not certain that Persefone moved in the right direction with 'Shin-Ken'.
For those of you did not participate in your elementary school geo-bee: where is Andorra? The answer that most people I’ve heard give to this question is usually “what is Andorra?” Don’t feel bad if that’s what ran through your mind. It’s a country the size of New York City situated in the Pyrenees mountain range between France and Spain. The population is only about 85,000, but 6 of those people have formed a pretty kick-ass progressive melodic death metal band they call Persefone. The funny thing is that these guys sing in English and base their songs on Japanese war stories. Andorran metal in English about Japan. Confusing? Yeah…
All joking aside, Persefone manage to go up against all odds to create very interesting sound that works like no other. I don’t mean “against all odds” in that they have some story of oppression or poverty, I simply mean that the styles they choose to meld together are some of the stalest in the metal genre today. The bands I would most liken them to would be Dream Theater, Avenged Sevenfold, and The Black Dahlia Murder. Now, if that doesn’t sound like hell in a round, thin, piece of metal, then I don’t really know what is (I suppose Toby Keith and Kenny G collaborating would be worse, but that’s the only thing I can think of). This album is the best example of “don’t judge a book by its cover” that I’ve ever seen.
What Persefone does is take Dream Theater‘s use of keyboards and progressive elements, Avenged Sevenfold‘s melodic hard rock-meets-metalcore ability, and The Black Dahlia Murder‘s razor-sharp ferocity and make an entire sound based on it. Once again, this looks horrendous on paper, but they execute it so well that I’m even close to putting this up as a best of 2010 nomination.
Just about every guitar solo on this album sounds nearly identical to something Synyster Gates (A7X) would do. It can actually get a little scary at times. The one song that breaks this mold is “The Wind Book”, which begins with a simple clean guitar solo that evokes David Gilmour’s (Pink Floyd) noodling on “Shine on Crazy Diamond” like I’ve never heard before. Every nuance of Gilmour’s style, from the flow of the notes to the buttery bends, is nailed with crazy accuracy. This song then drifts into “Purity”, one of several ballads on the album that work wonderfully––another ingredient they probably picked up from DT.
Despite the strength of their sound, however, the album does have one gaping weakness: the length. At 61 minutes, they go way over the amount of time a record like this should take up. Music of this sort just cannot suspend interest for over an hour. 45 minutes is a good spot, but even that is stretching it a bit. If it were my choice, I would have boiled it down to about 40 or the high 30s. It’s unfortunate, because the songs all cascade into each other, making this a hard album to listen to when fractured into pieces.
The whole does have its shortcomings, but each part is certainly worthy of your attention. Clear production and polished sound are enough to keep me listening to this one for a while. Who knows; maybe Andorra is the next paradise for metal. I suppose we’ll see!
[find this review and more at http://www.mindovermetal.org/]
When you first hold this album in your hands, you’ll immediately be observing it from the cover art to the names of the songs. And it won’t take you long to figure out that there’s an obvious Japanese theme given to it. With that in mind, I bought the album and as soon as I arrived back home, I began listening to the first track. After that, I just kept going and finished the entire album, and I had only thing in my mind: WOW! That was completely unexpected…
Obviously before I began listening, I knew there would be some connection to Japanese culture, but I didn’t know that it would be connected so well! And to think that Persefone is a band from Andorra! These guys definitely know what progressive means, because they just created Japanese art in the form of metal. Anyways, I’ll get on to the music itself.
I’ll start out with the main songs, such as “Fall to Rise”, which is the first full track on the album. Vocally speaking, this song consists of high pitched shrieks & low growls that sound like they just came out of the latest deathcore album. There's also some singing, which reminds me of the type of vocals done in alternative rock. Instrumentally speaking, the song consists of fast paced riffs, to more mid to slow paced groovy sections; some of the riffs are impressively heavy, while others lean towards the typical melodic death metal spectrum. The same goes with the songs following it, such as the next song “Death Before Dishonor” (a song appropriately titled to fit into the Japanese samurai theme).
One thing I have to discuss is the keyboards. They’re everywhere. Some would argue that they’re the greatest thing to ever be mixed with metal, while those who stay true will despise it. I personally neither hate them nor prefer them. I simply don’t mind as long as they’re simply in the background and not actually leading the riffs.
The production here is a bit overdone, which makes the album feel a bit bland and modern (not really a good thing). And mixing this type of bland production with typical modern melodic death metal sounds like it could turn into a disaster. Yet, it really isn’t... there was one thing that made me enjoy this album a little bit and that is the strange Japanese. If every song didn’t have the cool samurai twist and the progressive song structures, I couldn’t give a shit about Shin-Ken.
What I also enjoyed about this album are the well placed interludes which reside in between nearly every other song. Several of them are elemental ‘books’, such as “The Wind Book,” “The Water Book,” etc. These songs are actually more than just simple interludes, as many of them are intros to the song they are leading into. One of my favorites is “The Wind Book,” which nearly sounds like a part of the song right after it, “Purity.” Another one that I really enjoyed was “The Fire Book,” which had the Japanese folk music playing, and that really gave the album an authentic quality. With this authenticity, the album earns a feel of epic progressiveness.
After listening to this album, I’ve still had some mixed feelings. I hate the fact that the songs are generic melodic death metal, yet I crave more of the Japanese feel, and the interesting little progressive additives that actually gave originality into this work. Some of the songs are pretty catchy, while others are completely forgettable. As a melodic death metal album, Persefone have made a great achievement. As a progressive metal album, maybe not so much. I will still give this album a 60, only because I really thought the interesting parts shine more than the boring parts of this album.
For some reason I thought for a while this band was Japanese. The frankly bizarre vocal accent had me thinking it, and most importantly the production had me thinking it. The japs have always seemed to really excel at getting a certain indefinable mix of polished production and raw energy, and this has that too. The guitars, drums sound clean and are mixed perfectly, everything's sitting just so, the tones are great.. quality of the music aside this is an excellent reference CD for the sound engineer.
Production boner aside, it took me a while to get into this album. As a general rule I hate prog; I like the concept - really grand music, long and complex instrumental sections, general epicness in everything about it etc- but haven't ever really heard a band pull it off, Rush and Crimson aside (and even then I only really like their catchier stuff). Originally every piano bit and prog scale run (can't really describe it, you'll know when you hear it) had me cringing, but this has continued to grow on me for some time now. I think the melodeath influence in this thing sort of grounds it, as such; keeps the riffs catchy and keeps the music relatively grounded. Never thought I'd say I'd like a prog/melodeath release, but there you go!
Yeah, Persefone walk the line between good music and bad music with aplomb; it never gets too tech, the mellow parts stay on the side of 'not being crap', the riffs don't get too fruity, the synths never get too loud. There's a lot about, say, "The Endless Path" that I really wouldn't work if a lesser band tried it. If those synths were a bit louder, if the screams were a bit more annoying, it wouldn't work. But instead it becomes that rare thing called 'really good prog', where the complex structures and noodly riffs become this really fantastic thing and you're just sitting there, jaw agape at the general excellence of the whole thing. A lot of the album borrows liberally from some power metal too ('Rage Stained Blade') which again, helps things stay catchy and epic.
Which when you get down to it is what it's about. No point writing a blistering prog epic if no one's going to remember anything about it, and Persefone understand this. There's definitely a few lame bits here and there (Kusanagi when the vocals come in) but whatever, it's catchy, it's heavy enough, it's got all these epic, strangely structured songs that work perfectly, and it's got plenty of pretty cool bits of guitar wizardry that will satisfy both the prog head and those who came for the riffs. Don't expect anything terribly brutal, but do expect a very good album.