The Blood Divine
Rise Patheon Dreams
4.5
This is a compilation album from The Blood Divine, who are now defunct. This album features unreleased trax, live trax, and what I assume were their greatest hits. They featured 3 former Cradle Of Filth members and one current one, but they sound much different from them. They are similar to early Sentenced, from around the time of "Amok", maybe also a little similar to Moonspell, but barely. It's just sort of a doomy, gothic sound, with sort of a standard metal sound thrown in. Some tracks are heavy on the keyboards, but never overly so. Overall, the production could definitely be better. The guitars sound somewhat muddy and the drums are begging to be brought out more. When I think about it, I actually get sort of a Danzig vibe from them. I guess the lyrical content and the way the singer does his thing just sort of send my brain to Danzig. This can give you an idea of how much of a joke the lyrics are, so don't think you're going to be mesmerized by any deep poetry here. Most songs have a decent hook to them, but like so much music, it just lacks that extra something to put it over the top. It is still a decent listen, and it may make its way into some playlists in the future, but I don't think I'd ever listen to the CD in its entirety again. My favorite track is "Aureole", the first track. I like the keyboard intro which leads into a nice ambience to back up some tight guitar work. The song has the most catchy hook to it, I found myself nodding my head to the beat. I also liked "Revolt", but it was too short to be a favorite. I believe it was the heaviest track, I got sort of a Slayer vibe from it. "Enhanced By Your Touch" also had some awesome keyboards and a medium-fast paced, catchy main riff. Some tracks just begged to be skipped though, like "Sensual Ecstasy" and "Crazy Horses". They are just annoying and ridiculous, I couldn't stand to listen to either one. The main word for this album would have to be "decent". I wasn't in any particular pain for the most part, but I did find myself remembering some of the basslines or riffs from random points in some songs. If you ever wanted Danzig to do some doom/gothic metal or if you wish Sentenced would ditch the clean vox, then this may be as close as you are going to get to those two things. If there was some way to "rent" CDs, then I'd suggest that you do that. But there isn't, so maybe this album will be destined for your MP3 collection. Either way, I don't think you'd be disappointed with this group if you like old Sentenced, but I don't recommend paying full price for it.
