Visions in Verse

God this album is long. So long. So unbearably, dickbitingly long. I'm of the opinion that an album very rarely needs to be over forty minutes long, much less fifty, so it's no surprise that 'Visions in Verse' gets unbearable just over halfway through its girthy running time. The fact that it's a pretty generic form of a style I've never been particularly fond of in the first place isn't a boon to my opinion of it, either- Vespers Descent plays Gothenburg melodeath with precisely zero new influences or ideas, and is as summarily forgettable and unnecessary as that implies. I can't even say it's incapably written or performed- it's certainly not- it's just so completely irrelevant that I can't think of any reason to ever listen to it.

If you've listened to any (and I do mean any) Gothenburg album from the past decade and a half, you've already heard everything on this album. Heavily cut from the mold of later In Flames, Dark Tranquillity, and (as always) At the Gates, 'Visions in Verse' is little more than a verbatim retread of melodeath tropes from the later, more sleek and modernized incarnation of the style. Small traces of alt rock (on tracks like 'Measures of Control') dot the record's melodic sense, clearly cultivated from later In Flames, as though Vespers Descent could really do nothing but fully repeat the tropes of other, more famous bands. The riffs are all rather lazily constructed melodeath/pseudo-power metal riffs with no real display of creativity (not even in the shredtastic solos,) the drums listlessly run through the average slow double bass versus rock and thrash beats, and even the vocals are nothing more than a half-hearted impression of Fridén. I'm not exaggerating when I say that there's a sum total of zero new ideas expressed on this album; if there were a single release I would offer up as a realistic example of everything in modern melodeath, 'Visions in Verse' would be it.

There's nothing wrong with it- it's eminently listenable, even enjoyable while it's playing, and Vespers Descent are clearly not ignorant of how to construct melodeath properly. But still, I can't find a reason to listen to it- there's just too many records out there with more to offer than this one. It just comes off as half-hearted, uninspired, and ultimately meaningless in the greater context of the genre. 16 year olds who think that 'Colony' is literally humanity's greatest achievement might be interested in this, but everyone else will just get bored.

Although there are few relatively good tracks on this album, if you listen to this entire Vespers Descent‘s effort, despite it has kind of original sound and it doesn’t sound like most of the famous nothern melodeath bands, it gets very boring and repetitive. And I claim this as a big fan of melodic death metal. There are too many great bands and albums to check in this genre and in other metal/music genres at all, that it's not worth to waste your time and money on this one. I came across this band and since they have no myspace profile, I got this album based only on their music clip of a track called Cardinal Red. This track is actually one of the best on this album along with the opening track Dissent. I mean, all tracks on this album are kind of good, but if you listen to them one after another, you just find out, that they are very similar to each other. And there is even no standout track with so good melodies and harmonies that it would force me to listen to it again and again.

I find nothing bad on this album but its repetitivness, the production is very good, vocals are situated somewhere between death and black growls and there are even clean vocals on one track. Drumming is precise and sometimes quite technical but not very much, guitars are nice played but here comes the main problem – the riffs are really very similar to each other. After listening to the entire album, there are some riffs, none of them great though, stuck in my mind, but I can’t remember in which song did I hear them.

Many people use the same title as I did "Do not waste your time with this" if they want to say it's just another metalcore garbage. I can assure you, that this isn't metalcore at all. There is something that I haven't heard on any other melodeath album at all - it's some laughing on track 3 - Plains of Azure Light. What kind of influence is that? Punk? Probably. It doesn't matter anyway, it isn't on any other song, so it shouldn't get annoying.

To sum it up, if you are a really big fan of melodic death metal genre and if you really think there are no more bands to check or if you are curious about Australian melodic death metal like I was, try to listen this album, but I can‘t recommend it to any metal fan at all.