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Bands like Theatre Of Tragedy and Tristania have opened the
door to a new room of music that has not been entered by any others before but
now there are plenty of new clones popping up here and there. It would perhaps
not be very nice to refer to the French band Penumbra as a clone but there is
no doubt that at least Tristania must have had a very big impact on them. They
have also had a genuine interest for classical music which is something that
has been existent in France for a longer period of time with bands like Elend
and Misanthrope. There is however to my knowledge no other French band who
have took the concept this far before. Penumbra are very similar to Tristania
- there are choirs, violins, growling vocals, clean female soprano vocals,
deeper clean male vocals and the same sound that comes from a production at
Terje Refsnes' amazing Sound Suite studio. They have the same basic riffs as
Tristania but they lack those twists and turns that make Tristania such a
wonderful band. The choirs are not as well arranged either and both the female
and male vocals lack power and depth. They do have the right atmosphere,
passion and attitude but the song writing skills are still in need of
improvement. The opening of "Testament" shows what kind of potential the
lead female vocalist has but is still not utilized by the band with the
exception of that one song. Even though this is the slowest song of the album
and can't even be referred to as metal it is without a doubt the best one.
The only time when the growling sounds really impressive is four minutes into
the title track. I am probably being overly harsh in this review because I so
much wanted this to be as good as Tristania. It is still a very good album and
if you are into Tristania or Trail Of Tears you will probably enjoy this album
as well but it does not reach the same heights. Stand-out tracks:
"Insurrection", "Testament", "The Young
Martyr".
| Tracklist |
1. Neutral 2. Priestess Of My |
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Dreams 3. The Last Bewitchment 4. Moaning On Earth 5. |
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Insurrection 6. Testament 7. The Young Martyr 8. A |
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Torrent Of Tears 9. Pie Jesu |
: 45.22
| Buy other Penumbra albums |
