Eclipse Eternal
Reign of the Unholy Blackened Empire
6.9
Canadian symphonic black metal, produced by Glen Drover from Eidolon and Andy LaRoque of King Diamond. They refer to their members by titles of "the sound of a thousand feet marching in unison" and "tortured screams, bestial summonings, voice of chaos made flesh," and the strangest of all, "Rick Reid".
Clearly stated, Eclipse Eternal are another Dimmu Borgir knockoff with a death metal slant. Initially my only thought is how this is going to be one of those albums that I pray will suddenly get really bad, as I'd much rather review something I could formulate an opinion on. About half of the songs on the ridiculously titled Reign of the Unholy Blackened Empire leave me feeling apathetic, and the rest range from the aforementioned mediocrity to being quite impressive. They do an acceptable job of presenting black/death metal with keyboards and excellent rabid-duck vocals, but I have such a hard time caring about a style that I felt was perfected numerous years ago. Although through the nine minutes of "Sacrifice Love To The Gods Of Hate" there's a few pieces of interest, it's written with so little regard to the song as a whole. It's basically a waste of a few decent riffs, backed by frilly back-up keys and processed Bal-Sagoth speaking/singing. "Murder Of Art", however, is quality work through and through. The main riff is closer to the thrash end of the spectrum, but transitions well into a melodic Swedish part. Although I feel like I'm being tricked into enjoying it, it's pretty adequate, and rises to excellency when Eclipse Eternal enters a few spiraling technical riffs towards the middle. If you just sampled the album and ran across "Infested With The Human Disease", you probably wouldn't think twice about purchasing it. And while doing so isn't a mistake, it just isn't the most consistent record out right now. My one overall wish for this band is that they'd ditch their whole symphonic leanings and focus more on the aggressive and thrashy sound which they excel in creating. Drop the image, be more careful with the keyboards, and force the songs to be even faster. And stop doing your own renditions of well known themes that even Marduk covered, like on your title track.
Whoever wrote these song titles and lyrics shouldn't be placed near a pen ever again - I'd just like to get that out there. These are some of the most cliched and brainless phrases I've ever heard. It's almost like he's using some sort of meme or name generator.
Why am I still alive?
Because my hate never dies!
So while I feared that I was about to embark on a review of something so standard that I'd slit my wrists with the broken disc as soon as I removed it from my CD player, actually ended up being somewhat impressive. I wouldn't seek this out, necessarily, but if I found it in a used or discounted bin, I'd certainly risk scraping up my arms to rescue Reign of the Unholy Blackened Empire. So all in all, a decent release - but why the hell is it an hour long?
