Frailty – EP (2009)

Featuring songs created before Frailty’s debut album “Lost Lifeless Lights”, this eloquently titled EP gives us 30 minutes more of Frailty’s magical Death/Doom Metal. And in case you are a hardcore Death/Doom collector, you better get the Latvian release since it’s only limited to 300 hand labeled copies.

In “EP”, the band shows a heavier and somewhat different side to what we heard in “Lost Lifeless Lights”, but this makes sense, since you can hear how the band’s songwriting abilities evolved to what became their first full-length album “Lost Lifeless Lights”. And since “EP” was recorded in 2009 it probably sounds way better than if they would have recorded it before they had a release under their belt.

“Silent Winter” starts the EP with a nice keyboard intro and quickly explodes into powerful riffing, tight drumming and a combination of growls and shrieks (not too high pitched) that quickly shows the listener that this is by no means a ‘slow’ song. The second song “Black Phoenix” opens with a very hypnotic riff before exploding into full-on aggression. Like we mentioned before, “EP” is more on the heavy side of Death/Doom, and will take you by surprise, but after a few minutes you will realize that Frailty is still under the hood of this album (i.e. atmospheric passages of “Scarlet Prophecy” and “A Flower in the Dark Tide”).

Songs like “The Shining” have a very nice My Dying Bride feel to them and nicely round up this very ‘brutal’ and somewhat different release from Frailty. The ending of “A Flower in the Dark Tide” for us is one of the best passages that we have every heard in this genre, and leaves the listener hungry for more. If we were not as ethical as we are, we would completely rip-off this part and use it on another song.

In general, Frailty shows a different side in “EP”, and while it’s not as impressive as their debut album “Lost Lifeless Lights”, it holds is own as a very solid Death/Doom release. We would only wish to have more and more releases like this one. So keep an eye for this band and get one of the limited edition copies since it will surely become a hard sought collector’s item in the future.

Release: June 9th, 2009

Country: Latvia