Aeons Of Eclipse
The Hour Of Desolation
4.2
Aeons of Eclipse’s debut album is a chore to listen to. They’re a death metal band, the kind people like to use the word “brutal” excessively to describe, with some technical death metal and grind influences. Except here’s the most important part: they can’t come up with anything worth playing. The almost hour long disc is chock-full of boring riffs and shitty solos. The band sounds best when they’re playing the most generic chugging they can muster. And if the appeal is intended to be sheer power and sonic bludgeoning without regard to musical construction, this is a fucking disaster. The production overall isn’t great to begin with, but the drums especially are very thin, causing double bass rolls to carry no weight and snare hits to be incessantly grating. Songs are interchangeable and have no distinguishable differences, which makes the whole thing little more than a great big blur of irritating drums and garbage lead guitarwork.
The only positive qualities I can note about The Hour of Desolation is “Vermin”, which has about two minutes that resemble a part of a respectable song, and the vocalist, while largely unremarkable, has a couple impressive moments. “Vermin” is intriguing, because suddenly a switch flips and the song actually works. The guitars sound thought out; the riffs play off each other well and aren’t cobbled together randomly. The ball is dropped just as quickly, though.
I thoroughly regret listening to this at all, let alone multiple times. Maybe some Morbid Angel can console me.
