Review of Sear Bliss - Forsaken Symphony

Throw on the corpse paint and get out the Necronomicon, because here comes another black metal band to send shivers down your spine; or at least that's what they'd like you to think. Like so many black metal bands before them, I felt this had a lot of promise when I first popped it in to my stereo system, and like so many others I lost interest before the album even finished its first run through. With the ambient, dark intro to the first track "Last Stand" I thought I may be in for a bit of a treat, but as soon as the black metal fury of blast beats and fuzzy guitars kicked in that thought soon ended.
I felt like I had listened to this album before, the band just had a different name. It has the grim vokills of András Nagy, accompanied by guitar riffs (that are almost impossible to make out because of the poor production) of Csaba Csejtei and István Neubrandt, not to mention the bland drumming of Zoltán Schönberger. The only things that really made the musicianship on this album interesting were the ambient keyboards of Olivér Ziskó and the trombone (yes that's right, a trombone) playing of Zoltán Pál. That spelled ultimate doom for Sear Bliss in my book. Yet in listening to this album as I write this, I may have been a little harsh with that last statement. I should give these guys some credit, they have a member in the band that plays the trombone to add to the symphonic elements that the keyboards incorporate. There are some songs I enjoy on here too, like "Last Stand", "She Will Return", and "Eternal Battlefields". Unfortunately this album just doesn't hold true enough to stand the test of time and I'm sure will begin to quickly collect dust. For what it's worth this is a decent effort, yet just falls short of the ledge and plunges into that all too formidable pit of mediocrity.
The production, as any intelligent extreme metaler could've have guessed, is pretty raw to help maintain that evil grim black metal feel. Although I have to say it is better then some of the stuff I've seen come through the gates of Metal Review. The keyboards sound very fluid, it's just everything else sounds really raw.
When you strip away the trombone and the standout synthesizers, you are left with a black metal album you've heard 100 times before. I would recommend you listen before you buy.

Release Details

Sear Bliss

Forsaken Symphony

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