Beyond Light – Eclipsed Sun Path (2010)

Up in our review queue today we have Beyond Light and their debut full-length release “Eclipsed Sun Path”. After a few demos (available on their site), this one man band was finally given a shot through Sun and Moon Records. Featuring over 40 minutes of music, “Eclipsed Sun Path” shows an interesting band that could have done much better.

After your cliché introduction track, the album really starts with “Blackened Sunlight” a 6 minute epic that changes from Black Metal to atmospheric weirdness to more cohesive melodic section. This track also showcases some of the shortcomings of this release like the very dull drumming (probably drum machine or such) and the linear songwriting.

We have to say that the band’s strength relies more on the atmospheric side of things than on the run-of-the-mil Black Metal section. In tracks like “Eclipsed Sun Path” and “Sealed in Yesterday” the non-BM sections are the best. For example on “Sealed in Yesterday” the band evokes old-school Anathema with the acoustic passages and creates a very depressive atmosphere. This song is also not ruined by the spurt of the moment Black Metal elements of other tracks that feel very randomly introduced.

“Shades Sediment” is a clear example of ruining a good track with shrieks and ‘fast sections’. Here we have perfect harmony with nice music and the suddenly (3 minute mark) the band goes Black Metal ape shit destroying the atmosphere in our opinion. “Empty” starts off in a bad shape and regains composure near the middle of the track for a bit. Even the production on the BM side of things feels ‘crappy’ compared to the rest.
While we are big fans of depressive BM, Beyond Light does nothing for this genre. The band has basically two styles and fails at creating a cohesive mixture of both. On one side we have the atmospheric almost Doom-feel to the music and this is probably the best side of the band. On the other side we have the traditional (and sometimes very crappy) Black Metal side of things. If the band decided to pick a direction it would be greatly beneficial for them in the future.

If you consider the atmospheric sections alone, the release would have gotten a 90/100 from us. But the BM sections kill the mood most of the times, so we had to average our rating. Beyond Light definitely has talent for making atmospheric passages and songs, so why not drop the BM act and keep things more concise.

Release: November 5th. 2010

Country: Netherlands