Century Media – 2015 – Fınland
I haven’t heard the previous album from this band but I remember that some of my friends did and that they liked it very much. So this is my first encounter with this Finnish band and I first needed some time to get my thoughts clear about it, but not in a bad way. Why did I need some time for this? First of all because of the style. Barren Earth plays music which I haven’t heard in a long time. My first thought was Amorphis until the “Elegy” album but at certain moments more into the direction of their first two albums which is my favorite Amorphis era. Here and there are also some elements from newer Amorphis but also from maybe Sentenced and some other jewels from the land of the thousand lakes. As a fan of those bands, this release really hit my nerve. The music of these 8 songs can go from one direction into another, Old School Death Metal elements are combined with newer and more melodic elements, and clean vocals meet deep growls and make a mixture with always keeps the attention of the listener of this album. a perfect example for this and my personal favorite song here from this record is the song “A Shapeless Derelict” which at certain moments even have some kind of an opera feeling where Opera meets Death Metal. Older Therion comes a bit to my mind for this song and also the famous Amorphis album “Tales From The Thousand Lakes”. The only thing that I don’t like here on this album and on any other album is the sound of the 70’s keyboard or something which sounds like that. I don’t know why, but I never liked that sound and I can’t even close one eye here on it. Beside that, I can’t find any bad thing on this release when it comes to the music or the production of it. The songs are all very well done and very interesting. Not one of the 8 songs here on this record is bad or boring and it offers for a lot of people some interesting stuff to listen to. I hope that with this album, Barren Earth will become more known to a wider audience since they certainly have the potential for it.
8.5/10
