The Lost Whisper

A while ago I picked this up, having discovered the band on an archives search for “epic doom metal”. However Silent Winter (on this release anyway) is by no means an epic doom metal band in vein of Candlemass or Solitude Aeturnus, this is somber melodic death/doom with a heavy emphasis on keyboards.

Everything on here follows a simple pattern (excluding the short intro track), melodic keyboard intro which is followed by a fuzzy guitar mix (the bass comes through much more clearly on occasion) and then semi-buried vocals ranging from clean to growls. This pattern will go on until one of two things happen, either the shitty “epic” breaks occur where everything will abruptly just ends for a split second then the same chords/tones are played again (then promptly break off once again, then the cycle restarts) or the melodic interludes show up, in which the drums and the vocals just vanish, and your left with keys and guitars to just drift too. Musically the guy has a cool idea but he just repeats the concept for the entire demo, which becomes stale fast.

The production is average. The guitars are mixed into a buzzing mess which is buried with keys so any guitar sound is very herd to detect. Vocals are buried in the mix along with the drumming (if there is anything other than a cymbal being hit).

In closing I think that most people can just wait for a full length or something to be put out. This demo is decent but is something that you can only listen to when you have forgotten what it sounded like before.