Day: August 25, 2013

Germany’s Autumnblaze have been around for more than a decade now, in the course of which they have had the luxury of modifying their stylistic coordinates with each new work, culminating in the melodic but sure-footed gothic shown in this Every Sun Is Fragile. Those who, like me, had appreciated not a little the death doom of the previous Perdition Diaries (dating back four years now), will probably at first glance struggle a little to assimilate this new turn, which brings the Teutonic band to move on the territories, already widely beaten by many others, of Katatonia and Anathema more recent. The pleasant surprise is that, after several listens, the record definitely picks up in such a way that the final result does not appear at all inferior to what has been achieved by those previously mentioned, thanks to the undeniable melodic vein exhibited that allows several tracks to imprint themselves with apparent ease in the memory. Exemplary in this sense is the beautiful New Ghosts In Town, a track constantly and precariously balanced on the ridge separating melody and drama, in which clean vocals are effectively counterpointed by growl, something that also happens in the superlative Cold Soul, imbued with Anathemian moods to the core. Equally intense appear episodes such as Invisible Fields, the grittier Im Spiegel, the title track and the concluding Verglimmt. Obviously, the stylistic choice adopted by Autumnblaze carries with it, as a side effect, a sometimes excessive softening of the sounds, which makes some tracks objectively corny (Mein Engel, Der Aus Augen Fließt, How I Learned To Burn My Teardrops) but the whole thing turns out to be a decidedly venial sin in light of the satisfactory quality level of the entire work. Having said the excellent production and the remarkable vocal performance of Markus Baltes, it only remains to give credit to this new work of a band that, definitely, does not have among its faults those of resting on a predefined compositional scheme, even if this means unfortunately (at least for me), that the Autumnblaze of Perdition Diaries no longer exist and we will hardly see them again in the future; the current ones, on the other hand, with Every Sun Is Fragile could see certainly interesting commercial scenarios open up, and probably unthinkable until a few years ago.

2013 – Pulverised Records