The return of the Spanish band Autumnal, after eight years from the excellent Grey Universe, gives us back a different band but certainly more nature. The new disc, in fact, detaches itself in good part from the gothic doom of the previous work to land to sounds much closer to those of Katatonia. The change succeeds rather well to the band of the brothers De Pablo, even if, in the long run, this adhesion to a style for its nature rather compassionate sometimes makes the listening not very fluent; there is no doubt, in any case, that The End Of The Third Day consists of at least five songs that are irrefutable evidence of the excellent compositional work, able to induce a sense of inescapable melancholy in the listener, much more than they are not able to do for some time their most illustrious points of reference. Almost fifty minutes of such a scope would have been more than enough to satisfy even the most demanding fans, and even the tracks that leave less of a mark are still good, but simply end up diluting excessively the duration of the work, including a cover of a song by Supertramp, a great band but light years away from these moods, which perhaps it would have been more appropriate to be reduced to a simple bonus track. If this, along with the track closest to the claim work (The Storm Remains The Same) and the too katonic Man’s Life Is The Wolf’s Death, are the moments of normality of the disc, the first half hour with the triptych A Tear From A Beast, One Step… And The Rest Of Our Lives and The Head Of The Worm, slowly wraps us up with melodies that captivate and convince, as well as Resigned To Be Lived, which partly reminds us of Lake Of Tears, and the final Father’s Will, with guidelines close to Pain Of Salvation of Remedy Lane. Sound of Swedish matrix, then, if we want to draw some conclusions, but enriched by a melodic Mediterranean soul, capable of creating lines full of that emotional pathos that should be the ultimate goal for releases of this type. The vocal performance of Javier De Pablo is absolutely flawless, thanks to the ease with which he passes between different shades, mostly clean but never flatten on a single style, and supported by a magnificent guitar work. A great comeback for the band from Madrid, confirming what I had already mentioned in the case of the Helevorn review, regarding the exponential growth of the Spanish doom scene.

2014 – Cyclone Empire