Ember Breather

"Ember Breather" sounds like a great band name as well as a great title for an album and should Slovenian one-man atmospheric BM band Veldes ever discover that someone else beat him to the rights of his project's name, at least he'll have a ready back-up name. The music on this, Veldes' second album, is very good too: mostly raw and flowing melodic BM with plenty of sadness and rage and a tough edge in the churning tremolo guitar grind and the harsh screaming vocals. Add non-electric instruments like acoustic guitar, a plaintive piano and maybe a few other unidentifiable items, and the result is a recording of often hypnotic and deeply affecting music shifting easily from melancholy and anguish to sheer rage.

Opening track "The Roamer's Curse" sets the example that will be followed by the other four tracks: stirring, almost folk-like melodies and riffs that repeat throughout the length of their respective songs and which generate intense moods and feelings. The riffs may be taken up by piano and changed in ways that complement their guitar-generated originals. The screaming can grate on the nerves - it is extremely screechy and ragged in tone - but for impotent anger and frustration at the state of the world and humanity, the vocals are hard to outdo. Tracks are usually quite long - the shortest piece is just over 6 minutes in length - and since they are mostly instrumental and often repetitive, an argument could be made that they all could be shorter while still carrying the same force, passion and anger.

All tracks have very catchy riffs and hooks, and while no one track is better than the rest, probably the most Odinpop-accessible of them all is the middle song "To Ruins of Throneless Realm" which features some thrilling tremolo guitar work that just goes on and on, and some very crunchy riffing and hard grinding bass. The piano sounds even more isolated and pained in tone, probably as the contrasts between its pure tones and the rest of the music seem so much greater here. The mood is sadder here than on the rest of the album. There isn't much to fault here though if the drumming and the bass were deeper, we would have a real doomy and downbeat atmospheric BM monster. "Dust Scatterer" is another quite good song, introducing a slightly cleaner yet just as dark urban-blues feel into the overall Veldes style.

On the whole this is a good and consistent album of intensely sad and sometimes raging atmospheric BM - the only changes I would make to make this a great album would be shaving off a couple of minutes on the songs and taking out the last track which features no electric guitars and doesn't add much new to the rest of the album other than to reinforce the sorrow. If a major BM label were to pick up "Ember Breather" for release and distribution, it could very well be Veldes' break-out album.