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The opening song really made me think of a dark heavy doom metal band through its obscure keys, unrelenting drumming and infernal pace. “Tula” wiped those omens off my mind: the lengthened shadow of Opeth looms again, this time on the musical spectre of these Brazilian doomsters. The music of Åkerfeldt and co. is present in the melodic focus of the band´s aggressive sound, since MTC don´t include mellow/hazy passages whatsoever nor clean vocal lines (except for some scarce choruses). The influence though is not certainly excessive as in other flagrant cases (Swallow The Sun, for example). The fact they lean on the keys to create the main body of the songs, the use of a different vocal approach and other factors –as the lyrical concept, that´s based on myths and lost civilizations, as far as I know-, make the style of MCT distant from the Swedes, so to resume I´d say there´s just an Opeth influence and nothing more.
Too bad the first song seems to me different than the rest of the album, and it´s a pity I´d add, since I think the band displays there an enormous potential to create pounding dark doom metal away from melodic “foreign” intrusions. Don´t mistake me, I´m not bashing the CD due to that melodic trait, in the end music is melody, in a broad sense. In general “The Vanished Pantheon” is dark and intense, no funeral slow patterns at all. Drums are rich in hits, vocals come from the throat and have a certain Orphanage touch, and the synths are an instrument playing in the same league than the rest, but they just perform long notes following the guitar chords most of the times. “The Vanished Pantheon” is a good choice for melodic death doom fans and it´s correct and effective; in the downs section we could find some tempo changes are a bit sudden and could have been improved, besides the sometimes predictable melodic note sequences à la Opeth. These guys are capable to shake the influences off and record an absolutely killer album, something perhaps they´ll do in the future.
| Tracklist |
| 1. When The Solstice Reachs The Apogee |
| 2. Tula |
| 3. The Shine Of Lemuryan Cataclysm |
| 4. Ancestral Solar Emblem |
| 5. The Vanished Pantheon |
: 48.38
| Buy other Mythological Cold Towers albums |
