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.