Review of Ewigkeit - Conspiritus

I was able to review Ewigkiet's last record before my self induced hiatus, and as I listened to this record I reread it. I am very happy to report that all the problems I had with the last record - bad production, crappy sounding drums and general distraction in the recording are all cleared up. This is a crisp, well recorded album. And that means now we can concentrate on the actual music that sees these benefits.

What I had thought might be a bit of industrial blackened doom turns out to be more of a progressive traditional style. Progressive traditional. Nice one, Sessions. They call it Dark Metal over at Earache. OK. It's got a familiarity that is undeniable and as old as metal itself, yet it's laced with enough modern sensibility to give it a decent level of contemporary flair. The songs can go from power metal styled gallops to writing you might have expected from Pink Floyd albums. The album is themed around some kind of behind the scenes conspiracies, which is a bit unfortunate. More of the "illuminti" storytelling style is done to death, so it's hard to take that aspect of the record seriously, and that tends to affect the way I react to the individual songs. The record opens up with lines like "You still don't get it, do you. ...They can do whatever they want". Well, yeah I do get it. I have been watching "them" do just that for around twenty-five years now, actually.

But the musicality is strong. As a collection of music alone, this record makes good on the last one's promises. The musicianship is slightly subdued, but still makes its points. This may be because, as I had suspected last time and now have confirmed (fucking web search, Sessions...) this is mainly a one man project in the person of James Fogerty. And even the best musicians seem to get a subdued sound when they do it alone. But with the production this is not much an issue, and the songwriting makes up for it in any case. One thing I really enjoy is the guy's vocals. Clean singing has nearly zero vibrato and decently emotive; not even slightly over the top, but musical never the less. Sometimes the vox remind me of Waters/Gilmour style harmonizing. But it never gets in the way, never squashes the mood or wrecks a good song. Rare shit, friends. Rare fucking shit.

For the bottom line on this I am giving it a warm recommendation. Yes the story is one that can finally be told again for the dozenth time, but the quality, depth and variety of songwriting makes this a good record to have around. Even the keys, which can almost become overwhelming, can't sway me from a thumbs up review. Do yourself a favor, download a track or two and see for yourself. Give the tracks a couple of chances and I believe you will agree that this record belongs in your collection.

Release Details

Ewigkeit

Conspiritus

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