Did Tomorrow Come...

I would be remiss to think of anything possibly quirkier than the track "Panacea" from Sirrah's debut, but I think in general, it's follow-up full-length Did Tomorrow Come... is much more progressive and quirky, while still keeping a lot of its fundamentals intact. You can still hear a lot of elements of anything from My Dying Bride to Paradise Lost to Pyogenesis to Moonspell, but the Polish band was not settling its butt down on any laurels, but writing that style into the future. Upbeat, peppy, perky ideas are strewn throughout the ten tracks, and the band seem unwilling to be pigeonholed into any one niche. I'd almost risk that Did Tomorrow Come... is like Sirrah, only Arcturus got ahold of it and infected it with their zany carnival attitude.

The production is cleaner here, really giving us better access to its scattershot components, from the ethereal female vocal lines to the busier guitars which at times almost border on a blend of thrash and doom metal. Synthesizers are used sparingly, as well as pianos, and the majority of the vocals bounce between the guttural expectations and then a wavier, sad or drugged sounding cleaner male vocal that is perhaps one of the weakest parts of the album. Perhaps due to the accent or confidence level, but there are moments that it sounds quite good, and others where it feels like its lost the plot. Regardless, it's only a minor intrusion that can't quite mar the surface of the obvious excitement below this. It's like the band was listening to their first album and decided not to sound so sad anymore, and gave each other a kick in the rump while they were in the studio, or maybe just a lot of drugs. To its credit, though, the writing doesn't lose a whole lot of impact from where they were at two years prior.

It doesn't have a truly standout track for me like "Acme", but at the same time, there's not really anything goofy like "Panacea" to spoil it. The closest might be "Madcap" which sounds like someone took the orchestration from the old Celtic Frost Into the Pandemonium... album and combined that with a strange Gothic chamber quartet, but in fact that song's tremendous fun. The closer, "Floor's Embrace", starts off pulsing off like it's going to be some mix of dance and folk music, but that one is rescued quite quickly when the great guitar riff rips forth. Did Tomorrow Come... is fascinating stuff, despite me not liking a few of the vocals, it's quite sticky and a superior experience to Acme only if you're willing to chuck your expectations to the curb and revel in its unique boldness. Had Sirrah continued on much longer, who knows what they might have become? I could certainly hear them hobnobbing with the likes of Arcturus, Solefald, Sigh or Diablo Swing Orchestra. This is a fun album that too few give a damn about.

-autothrall
http://www.fromthedustreturned.com

Just a mere year after the impressive ‘Acme’, ‘Did Tomorrow Come…’ was released by the Polish doom metallers in 1997. Stylistically, the sophomore is very much like the debut, but I had read somewhere that the debut was a better album all over than this sophomore. To me, they sound very similar. Same sort of vocal approach, same experimental touches, although the production has altered and opened up more. It doesn’t sound as dense as before and there’s a weirdly electronic sound to some of the sounds alone the way, like the insanely catchy ‘…For The Sake of Nothing’, which features some great vocal displays, especially from the cleaner side of the band, which is once again very prominent within the entire album, not only this one song. Stylistic approach in mine, the band, as I said, sound a lot like they did the previous year so I’m not sure what the review I read was going on about because there aren’t too many differences in the way this ship was run in 1997 to how it was run in 1996, though that strange electronic vibe, once again shown on ‘Floor’s Embrace’, tends to crop up and the most unusual times.

What does it add to the album? Well, not an awful lot. It sounds like what cardboard sounds like when you put one hand on either side of it and flex the middle. That weird whooshing sound. The electronic aspects are perhaps a bit more rampant now than before, but they don’t harm, or enhance the album. They merely exist to confuse. The vocals tend to dominate a lot of the songs, as was the case on the debut. The clean vocals are much better than the death/doom growls, but the growls tend to feature more prominently now than before. I preferred it when the clean vocals had the reigns because the atmospherics sounded more at ease being led by cleaner vocals and with the addition of the layered violin, the clean vocals suit’s the cleaner aspects of the band, though this side to Sirrah has become a less noticeable one, as shown on songs like ‘High Treason’ which features, again, a lot of catchy guitar work, which is often well written, and a buried violin. I made the comparison between Sirrah and Brave, a United States based progressive rock band before and the comparison still feels worth mentioning, even on this album.

The violin and occasional female vocals, though projected in a soprano fashion, unlike Michelle from Brave, remind me of Brave exclusively. The cleaner sides to both bands sound somewhat similar, though not identical. The electronic vibe of the keyboards, which is now becoming a consistent force within each song, makes Sirrah appear perhaps a bit more unique than Brave, though the approach by Brave feels far more sincere and deep in emotion, as opposed to this sophomore, which can focus perhaps a little too much on being creative and dynamic, instead of focusing on the elements and aspects which draw the listener closely to an emotional connection to the band. The bass doesn’t feel as involved this time either and though these are only small differences, they do eventually wrack up to become quite important differences between the two, though I still enjoy them both, though probably the debut a bit more because of its flexibility with fluidity, whereas this album is flexible, but not so fluid.

Acoustics still feature, but they’re not as widespread. ‘Lash’ features a magnificent opening. Keyboard generated ambiance, a divine beauty supplied by the wonderful violin, acoustics and then light percussion. This introduction to ‘Lash’ should really have been the type of sound the band fought to achieve, instead of opting for the catchier, less emotional displays of the guitars and harsher vocals. Clean vocals feature ever so well here and tie the album together well. The sound doesn’t last forever, as expected, but it is a nice addition to the album and reminds me of a band I cannot for the life of me remember. The experimentation is wildly varied, but it’s great to hear in such a cohesive manner and even the distant soprano vocals of the female vocalist seem worthy of inclusion, despite their being in the background. This is a very eclectic song with more rock orientated sounds than doom metal ones. The album would be a lot better if it dropped the metal influence, something I felt about the debut, too. In conclusion, this is a tidy album with a lot of great play, but some unusual parts, too, which can sometimes make the album feel a bit clustered.