In Our Eye

The last gothic metal band I listened to from Italy turned out to be a disappointment, but for whatever reason I had a feeling that Tystnaden would make up for that. Well, having listened to the entirety of In Our Eye I can safely say that they fail. And they fail pretty badly, I might add.

What's wrong with what they're doing? Let's start with the fact that this is labelled as being gothic/melodic death metal. That second part is the wrong thing for Tystnaden to be classed as, as every riff sounds like a really mediocre metalcore band. Chugging along for the entirety of the album, barring a few solos that don't actually have that much use. It's painful to listen to because it isn't done particularly well either, not like Krimh's work where the chugging (admittedly of djent style rather than metalcore, but chugging nonetheless) is appealing and evokes a lot of feeling. This band just seems intent to chug away without any purpose or aim.

The next thing that's really wrong is their attempt to blend many different elements together in one neat little package. Every single track seems to come to a sudden slow (even if they don't play particularly quickly to begin with), just to insert some random and needless acoustic section into the song. Because the song just drones on between these parts, the listener doesn't get anything from this. They're just kind of there.

After that, you've got the fact that the music is just really, really boring. The band don't do anything that gets me excited, they just do the same few things for a whole forty-five minutes. Whenever it sounds like they've maybe decided at last to shift direction (not too often, but an occasional feature of the music), it rarely lives up to that feeling. The one exception is Fragile, but that song isn't an interesting listen even if it is in a different direction.

Sadly, even the vocals are poor here. The female cleans are okay, but the heavy accent on them kind of puts me off. Then there are the male growls that sound like they came from pretty much every metalcore band ever. The pair don't mix together very well and seem to fit very awkwardly when they attempt to do duets, which is obviously another negative point. Not that there's any saving the band by this point, they've gone well past the point of no return.

That's not even the end of my list of complaints, but I won't bother rambling on any further. Basically what I'm trying to put across is that I'd stay away from In Our Eye and indeed from Tystnaden if I were you. There's a reason that this band is far from the mainstream light, and it isn't that the system's not fair.