Album Name - Air Not Meant for Us
Band Name - Fires in the Distance
Genre - Melodic Doom/Death Metal
Label - Prosthetic Records
Release Date - April 28, 2023
Line Up -
Craig Breitsprecher - vocals, bass
Jordan Rippe - drums
Yegor Savonin - guitars, synths
Kristian Grimaldi - guitars, vocals
The band creates an almost perfect mixture of the brutality of death metal with guttural vocals and heavy riffs, combining it seamlessly with the soaring and melodic melancholy of emotional doom metal aesthetics. The emotional vocals and dual baseline are complimented by virtuoso lead guitar, piano, synths and machine like drumbeats creating a sense of progressive technicality pervading the album.
The album keeps the music following since the short piano intro of 'Harbingers' and everything seems to work as a whole. The listener gets gripped in the sorrowful emotional onslaught that is unrelenting yet beautiful. The 50 minutes seem to end too quickly that I, as a mesmerized listener, immediately returned to the opener to once again immerse myself in this gloomy atmosphere.
The main problem with melodic metal albums these days is that they often have tracks that seem to sound too similar and repetitive, making the listener feel like they are hearing songs they have heard before, or forget about their experience. But here, these guys create a unique experience by making each track distinct yet making them also seem like part of a whole somehow.
'Wisdom of Falling Leaves' and 'Psalm of the Merciless' are rather shorter and tighter doom death songs; the instrumental track is reminiscent of early melodic death pieces with typical melodic riffs. 'Idiopathic Despair' has a soothing piano-based middle part with crushing beginnings and ends, while the first two songs attempt to give us the combined taste of the best of both genres.
It is really hard to find any standout track in here but the opening 'Harbingers' and 'Crumbling Pillars Of A Tranquil Mind' truly represents the best of what the band has to offer here, while the instrumental track 'Adrift, Beneath the Listless Waves' creates a somewhat break by giving us more straight forward melo-death elegance and a moment of clarity.
Another topic worth mentioning is the poetic lyrics dealing with personal struggles, emotional anguish, and dread of existentialism. Listener like me who often look to the lyrics for some depth and meaning, this was another positive for the album.
If I had to nitpick, I wish there were some other melodic instruments, some clean vocals and maybe the length could have been made a bit shorter to make this ever more memorable.
Overall Score -
8.5 out of 10.
For more info check out the bands official Bandcamp page and their metal-archives page -
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