Ah yes, good old doom/death. It’s funny how all of the progenitors have grown from growling over BLACK SABBATH riffs, to a post doom/death world. Actually, I kind of miss that first PARADISE LOST album. It seems like a lot of new doom/death bands like to start off taking cues from the old school doom/death bands right when they were making the transition between singing and growling. THE PROPHECY is no exception.
Going to the Metal-Archives.com, I found five bands called THE PROPHECY , and fourteen just called PROPHECY, so I can’t that this particular band is extremely original. Almost all of the long songs present a mixture of slow dirging melancholy riffs, slow two-hand tapped depressing melodies on top, and dashing of violins. The vocals are a mixture low growls and singing, although in this case the majority hangs slightly towards the singing. There’s a few breaks in the action that feature only singing and violins, plus some very well-hidden keyboards imitating other instruments. I certainly can’t point out any instances where keyboards are used, so they don’t sound cheesy or fake.
Unfortunately the whole formula is used in pretty much every song, with the exception “Of Darkness”, which is very good attempt at heavy song, with its biting pedal tones. It certainly helps to break up the action after what seems like you’ve been listening to the same songs over and over for thirty minutes. The variations to differentiate all the songs from one another though are slight, and barely noticeable because it’s really only minor tempos changes. They’re all slow songs, but there’s the “faster than the last song we played” styled songs, and then the “slower than the last song we played”. Transitions like that kept on giving me a glimmer of hope for some change, but by the time almost every song took hold, they all ended up blurring together.
I really want to make it clear that the element that made “Of Darkness” stand out compared to all the other songs wasn’t the just the fact that is was a great doom/death band doing a heavy song, but it provided some contrast to what was going on for the rest of the album. I’m not wishing for more heavy songs per se, I’m just wishing for some bigger change-ups.
As it stands, seven songs coming to the limit of running time of a CD is a bit much, especially since so many of the songs sound the same. Had THE PROPHECY done something like say, cut everything down to two or three songs in half an hour, that would make everything much easier to digest, while retaining everything THE PROPHECY wants to play, and at the same time keeping up just enough diversity. “Revelations” is just too much of the same to take in all at once.
6/10
The Official The Prophecy Website
The Prophecy at MySpace
No Face Records
