Pale Season is the newest album from a band that is trying to offer us soft and powerful vibes. The album brings a huge mix of alternative, Gothic metal, doom and so on. The special guest on this album is the Doom queen Heike Langhans (Draconian). This album has incorporated small details here and there, you definitely need to give it 3-4 good listening to catch them all. Still can feel a bit of Katatonia sound in this, but I guess nobody is surprised. The beautiful switch from soft voice, soft instrumental to a progressive and repetitive state it give us a good taste of what progressive metal is all about. The album has 9 songs:
- Hound;
- Rotting Eden;
- Binary;
- Final Light;
- Embers;
- Pale Season;
- Anti Meridian;
- Signals In The Sky;
- Meridian;
Hound is a soft intro, being followed by Rotting Eden is a perfect match. Rotting Eden has a great built-up, starts similar in tone with Hound, only to descend into a more stronger sound, and close to the end you will be hit out of nowhere by some heavy hash vocals, truly beautiful! Binary and Final Light maybe a bit hard to digest, if you are not a big fan of clean vocals. My initial thought on these songs was: Wow, it have been too long since I have listen to this much clean vocals. Luckily, the exceptional soft breakdown in Final Light are just a breath of fresh air, pushing the song to a level where you don’t know what to say or think about it. Embers is the song that has the stronger Katatonia sound, it is more atmospheric in texture and a heavier dissection between the vocals and instruments. Signals In The Sky is the stronger piece of the album, probably because after 7 songs the voice changes, you just got used to Tobias Netzell’s voice and now comes a new element, with this song we reach the sky of doom metal, the sweet voice of Heike Langhans is way to candied, it just leaves you breathless. Meridian is a songs that makes you descend into space, a perfect ending, marching Hound. Again, you may need to give this album 2-3 tries before it completely grows on you, but this is a record that will make you addicted again to soft vocals. The mix of elements is so well-done it is hard to predict them. I am surprised how well balanced this album came to be. It is solid and strong. I could imagine the band going on and off and checking and double checking every note to make sure it fits properly. Every song is a new experience and an amazing journey. He album is a continuous experiment of mixing different genres only to create a well-balance sound.
