Enchantment were one of the most interesting of the many meteors that appeared in the British death doom firmament at the beginning of the 90s, along with the more grim Decomposed of the magnificent Hope Finally Died…; the Blackpool band appeared shortly after their London colleagues, releasing the good Dance the Marble Naked in 1994, which remained their only record for twenty-eight years before their return to long-distance, anticipated last autumn by the good single As Greed as the Eye Beholds, which we find here as opening track. Cold Soul Embrace is by no means a revivalist work, or one that has come too late: those who experienced the formidable years of development of this sub-genre at first hand will recognise the stigmata of that sound, albeit updated to the present day. The immediate perception, in fact, is that of listening to an album composed and played by someone who does not limit himself to the calligraphic repetition of the matter, offering instead a faithful, sincere reinterpretation of it, but at the same time fascinating and full of interesting moments. In fact, the death doom of Enchantment, who have come to this new test with a line-up that is 4/5 unchanged from their debut full-length, maintains intact both the rhythmic robustness and the melodic character that, at times, recalls the Anathema of the Darren White era; the seven songs, plus a brief instrumental fragment, take the listener back to those good old days when sounds perfection took second place to a substance imbued with melancholic transport, here well sublimated by the poignant last three minutes of the concluding One Jump Of The Sun. All this and nothing less is what can be expected from the return of Enchantment, capable of delivering around three quarters of an hour of auteur death doom of the British school, such as one rarely hears nowadays.

2022 – Transcending Records / Cosmic Key Creations