Soliloquium – An Empty Frame

[schema type=”review” name=”Soliloquium – An Empty Frame” description=”Label: Transcending Records” author=”Juho Karila” pubdate=”2016-10-21″ ]

Soliloquium is one of the bands that are a bit more easier to forgot because of their difficult choice for a name. Hailing from Sweden, this 3-piece metal group has just recently released their debut album which carries the name: An Empty Frame.

The album starts with a rather dark and heavy track, The Eye of the Storm, which fittingly introduces us to what the album is all about: mixture of doom and melodeath with extremely low growly vocals. Somewhere, mesmerizing synths loom over the massive wall of distorted guitars. Other thing these swedes play with is change of dynamics as when guitar leads are kicking in, they’re played with almost completely clean guitars; not a bad concept on paper eh?
Earthly Confine changes the mood a little because it’s sung clean but otherwise it utilizes the very same elements as the opening track, which kinda makes the track lose its edge. This leads us to the major problem with the album. While the riffs are played precise, it feels every time that the band has gone where the fence is lowest as the arrangements are not exactly most original. Arpeggios are in huge role in this song and it makes me wonder if I’m still listening to the same band and the clean singing just works better that the rather monotonous growls.

Luckily the third track proves to be a bit more faster one, shifting the mood from sleepy-etheric to something completely else as when the clean intro turns into a double-bass-backed shredding, you’ll find yourself headbanging to the groovy riffs that are nothing like heard before as the arrangements are finally something to like and proves that this is the best track off the album. In the middle, the hammering ceases down to the familiar clean guitar arpeggios and that frail clean singing. Combining the best bits of Soliloquium, this is really what I’d wish to hear more from them.

Many have fallen into the same trap as The Empty Frame and that is having too much mid-tempo songs that just don’t quite make it. That applies to the next few tracks that are just simply recycling everything we’ve heard before and it makes me feeling like the shine has worn off of the album. More difference to the tracks and little more effort and we’d have a real force to be reckoned with.

As background music, this could work but when you put your mind into the listening, the tracks seems to be just blending into eachother in a boring way.

Lineup:

Stefan Nordström – vocals, guitars
Jonas Bergkvist – bass
Mortuz – drums

Tracklist: 1. Eye of the Storm 2. Earthly Confine 3. The Sorrow Path 4. With or Without 5. The Observer 6. Procession 7. Fear Not

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