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It’s a depressing and lamentable thing when a band spends years honing its craft, enters the studio, lays down track after track of stirring and artful music, lends it a fine production sheen, presses it onto disc and houses it within evocative artwork, only to wind up with a sum-total loser at hand. Such is the case with Russia’s Alley, a decent enough band of chaps, I’m sure, who are so musically indebted to Opeth that it lapses into out-and-out plagiarism. Listening to this album is an exercise in spotting all the footnote references to the Swedish pioneers’ albums, especially the likes of Still Life and Blackwater Park, where the acoustic licks overlap with hard riffing and wah-wah distortion in the most overtly ‘70s manner within the catalog. But, the fact that I break off into retrospective tangents about Opeth instead of discussing Alley – or, as I shall refer to them henceforth, Alpeth – says much about the latter’s own relative merit. The talent is there, the intention is noble, but that just won’t cut it when the derivation is so damned palpable. In thrash, it’s joyous homage. In prog-death, it’s just bad taste. Other much-needed considerations: losing the pointless intro and sequencing tracks in a manner other than from shortest to longest, which makes this album go on interminably. One thing this band ain’t is boring, but it sure works hard to seem that way.
| Tracklist |
| 1. Duhkha |
| 2. Coldness |
| 3. Dust Layer |
| 4. Hessian Of Rime |
| 5. Fading Fall |
| 6. Jaded Mirrored |
| 7. Days For Gray |
: 63:33
| Buy other Alley albums |
