Ελληνικά
Last Updated on 09:05 PM by Giorgos Tsekas
Genre: Doom/Heavy Metal
Country: Germany
Label: No Remorse Records
Year: 2021
Servants To The Tide is a new Epic Doom Metal band from Germany. Their self-titled debut on No Remorse Records will be released on March 26 and I must confess that lately it is on my play list for many days.
I admit that the first single released by the band did not impress me much. But listening to the album as a whole in its entirety, I can say that a kind of fine tuning took place with the artistic message of the band, with the result being superb in the end. And in fact I have to also admit that the single itself worked much better as part of an overall listening than as an individual track.
Their sound’s basic material is clearly the pompous, epic Doom Metal endowed with the drama we encounter in the first works of WHILE HEAVEN WEPT. Here, of course, the orchestration of the songs is clearly based on the guitars, which, although they have Doom logic in riffing, are also decorated with many extra melodies. Here you may miss the keyboard background we meet on the first WHW universe, but be patient as the band has more to offer to its listeners.
There are interludes / epilogues and acoustic parts in the tracks, with guitars or piano. All of the above offer an excellent melancholy coloring all compositions, but also a very emphatic I would say contrast in relation to the guitars which is the main element of the main songs. This very contrast for me is the strong point of the album and creates a unique atmosphere.
Some tracks also have hazy themes similar to the ‘90s British Doom, while in combination with some growling vocals the whole result -in specific parts- brought me in mind PARADISE LOST’s “Gothic”. Yes there are some growls, but basically the vocals are clear and melodic throughout the material.
The vocal lines are well-worked and they fit perfectly with the extra melodies that we find in guitar lines. The minimal performance is something I really liked as this approaching seems to be a conscious interpretive choice.
So Servants To The Tide is like a raw and emotionally tense version of the early WHILE HEAVEN WEPT? As a first look, probably yes, but with plenty of 90s fog and enough drama. With a little more searching we will find other influences, from SOLSTICE to ATLANTEAN KODEX and if we listen even more carefully we will find generous doses of German Epic melancholy that once brought forward bands like WYTCHCRAFT or DOOMSHINE.
