Fall of Empyrean – A Life Spent Dying (2010)

After a waiting period of 6 years between releases Fall of Empyrean is finally back, with their crushing Death/Doom Metal. “A Life Spent Dying” has been waiting to be released for a few years now, and finally Grau records picked it up for release. The band still plays Death/Doom Metal like in the old days and kills at it.

“A Life Spent Dying” is a pretty decent successor to “A Darkness Remembered”, the band features their characteristic sound crafted with “Anhedonia” with only a few tweaks to make it sound even better. Most of this album is very formulaic; take for example the song “The Air is Still” which showcases every Death/Doom Metal trick in the book. This approach does not reduce the quality of music created by Fall of Empyrean, and take anything from this great release.

In a Death/Doom Metal scene that is pretty much dying down in the last few years, it’s nice to hear new albums that keep the flame alive. Fall of Empyrean has been one of our favorite bands since we first heard “Anhedonia” and do not fail to deliver with “A Life Spent Dying”.

One of the most notable characteristics in this band’s music is the very powerful growls from their front man Richard Media. We would only expect that most releases of this genre (or even DM) had such vocals that really transmit the emotions of the music and are ‘clear enough’ for us to understand the lyrics. We love the subtle keyboard usage that only highlights parts of certain songs and gives a simple ethereal sound to the bands music without taking too much attention for themselves.

As far as the guitar goes, most riffs are pretty standard for a Doom Metal release but in one particular song (“A Long Silence”) we have some Southern rock/metal riffs that feel a bit out of place but still sound interesting. We have very mixed thoughts about the acoustic parts/songs that make this album feel somewhat disconnected. While they are pretty solid, we don’t really like the way they kill the pace of the album.

The first eight songs of this release are very well crafted and all mesh somewhat together (we say this because of the acoustic parts that kill the flow sometimes). However, the ninth song “Catharsis” is way too brutal for this release, it’s a more straightforward Death Metal track that just doesn’t feel right in this album, the drumming and the vocals get way more aggressive than the rest of the music and totally kill the ending of this release for us.

Overall, we truly enjoyed “A Life Spent Dying”, since it’s a very solid release from this American band. However, there are some issues that we did not completely like and decreased our liking of this album by a few points. If you are looking for a Death/Doom album, we think it won’t get any better than “A Life Spent Dying” this year, just block the 9th song so you can enjoy it more.

Release: May 14th, 2010

Country: USA