Synopsis:

Forgettable and emotionless gothic/doom metal from Poland.

Review:

You’d think with seven minds behind a band/record, something slightly more creative than this half hearted affair would surface from this long running Polish outfit. However, with a mix of gothic metal (morose plodding riffage, operatic female male/vocals, synths) and classic doom (clean heavy metal male vocals, guitar tone, solos and more heavy metal pacing), Cemetery of Scream’s conceptual sixth album falls flat.

I kept waiting for The Event Horizon to take off and show me the skills of an eleven year veteran act from a respected scene, but it never happens, as instead the album just mopes along with never a hint of the one thing that makes goth/doom what it is--emotion. The stale, flat riffs and hokey synths and occasional string sprinkling overlay demo-quality, heavily accented vocals and the whole thing is all wrapped up in a wafer-thin production.

I’ll admit, The Event Horizon isn’t a truly god-awful album--I’m not gagging while its playing and this veteran band seems to know their instruments with a sense of confidence, and rarely a sliver of something memorable seeps in (“Cold Obsession In My Eyes”, “The Secret Window”) but damn, I’m completely listless and unmoved by virtually all of the music here. Even the female vocals sound uninterested and by the numbers, lacking any sort of truly tangible emotion or visage of involvement (“Absinthe”).

To top things off, the flimsy production is robotic and rigid, the worst choice of sounds for a gothic/doom record, so the end result of just a completely ‘blah’ record that in reality should be the last for an unknown band that seems to have avoided truly high standards and recognition outside of Poland for over a decade now.