The Fall Of Every Season – Amends

Releasedate: 22-02-2013; Label: Grau
By: Martine Goffard

Fortunately, Saturnus’ Saturn in Ascension, fantastic gem that everyone should have bought by now, was released in 2012 because this album we review here could have been a dangerous threat to the status of best album of the year. Though that we are just in February and that many good things are still being seasoned in the artists’ kitchens, Amends is already on the top of the list for the best doom cd of 2013, at least in my heart.

The Fall Of Every Season is a one-man-band created in 2004 by the Norwegian Marius Strand. Amends is his second album and as a solo project, it has a very strong personality, a mirror of Strand’s soul. The album plays on the contrasts: the oscillations between the grunt and the sublime clear voice, the transitions in the guitars from firmness to frailty. Strand organizes his songs in layers with different playing styles, giving the impression that we have a whole band performing. The most impressive is still the atmosphere. We have all the ingredients for a gloomy doom metal, yet the desperation in the lyrics doesn’t appear in the music. There is no aggressiveness, not even in the grunt. The whole album flirts with progressive metal. Even The Mammoth is light and poetic. Amends is harmonious and delicate. Fully inspired by the nature, it bears its capacity to “born again”, even winter falls for spring. The sadness inherent in our mistakes is present but allied to an infinite hope that proves that amends are possible. That it can’t be too late. The melody swirls like leaves in the wind, like the young lady of the cover on the waves, like dancing candles or drops of water on A Portrayal, sweet and melancholic, too ethereal, forever out of reach. The transition between the songs is barely noticeable. Amends is a one single fresco, a one hour doom ballad. Until the waves swallow the beating of your heart.

Line up
Marius Strand – Vocals, All instruments

Tracklist: 01. Sole Passenger 02. The Mammoth 03. A Portrayal 04. Aurelia 05. Come Waves

Links:
The Fall Of Every Season Facebook