So, I was using iTunes today, going through the music store, and to my complete surprise, iTunes is selling The Pale Haunt Departure for a download price of $7.92. Apparently available back on August 16th. They even have a review of the CD for you to read...
Album Review
Novembers Doom's lyrical landscapes are really, really scary: filled with haunted characters, tormented spirits, and worst of all, scarecrows! Oh, and their musical backdrops are of course quiet apropos to such chilling storytelling, as well - although career maturity has seen the doleful Chicago natives using ever less cheap shock tactics and gimmicky gothic atmospherics (like, say, guest female vocalists) to cover up any songwriting deficiencies. The results can be heard in 2005's slowly seductive The Pale Haunt Departure, which delves in altogether more subtle dynamic contrasts for its borderline progressive death metal (think Opeth, but not quite as epic), with harmonic power chords, gentle acoustic breakdowns, and the occasional clean vocal lines plotting to achieve a more fluid emotional cadence. The album also shows vocalist Paul Kuhr's oft-impenetrable poetry exchanging fantasy for real-life subjects, more often than not. New odes to negativity like "The Dead Leaf Echo" (where the narrator wallows in his failures) and "Swallowed by the Moon" (describing a dying father's fears for the child he leaves behind, too young to remember him), clearly afford deeper layers to scrutiny in the lyrics. And in the wholly atypical glimmer of hope "Autumn Reflection," November's Doom counter the grain of a career-long melancholy by joyfully describing the joys of fatherhood! Still, manic-depressives should not panic, as additional numbers like the driving "Dark World Burden" and the deathly maelstrom of a title track plead their musical cases with reliably downcast forcefulness... oh yeah, and those scarecrows, of course. And finally, in the closing "Collapse of the Fallen Throe," the band revisits their doom/death roots with a positively majestic riff to go with a nightmarish set of words - all very metal. In sum, The Pale Haunt Departure breaks much needed new ground for November's Doom, who were in danger of sounding too derivative of other artists, of late.
What's everyone thoughts on this?
Album Review
Novembers Doom's lyrical landscapes are really, really scary: filled with haunted characters, tormented spirits, and worst of all, scarecrows! Oh, and their musical backdrops are of course quiet apropos to such chilling storytelling, as well - although career maturity has seen the doleful Chicago natives using ever less cheap shock tactics and gimmicky gothic atmospherics (like, say, guest female vocalists) to cover up any songwriting deficiencies. The results can be heard in 2005's slowly seductive The Pale Haunt Departure, which delves in altogether more subtle dynamic contrasts for its borderline progressive death metal (think Opeth, but not quite as epic), with harmonic power chords, gentle acoustic breakdowns, and the occasional clean vocal lines plotting to achieve a more fluid emotional cadence. The album also shows vocalist Paul Kuhr's oft-impenetrable poetry exchanging fantasy for real-life subjects, more often than not. New odes to negativity like "The Dead Leaf Echo" (where the narrator wallows in his failures) and "Swallowed by the Moon" (describing a dying father's fears for the child he leaves behind, too young to remember him), clearly afford deeper layers to scrutiny in the lyrics. And in the wholly atypical glimmer of hope "Autumn Reflection," November's Doom counter the grain of a career-long melancholy by joyfully describing the joys of fatherhood! Still, manic-depressives should not panic, as additional numbers like the driving "Dark World Burden" and the deathly maelstrom of a title track plead their musical cases with reliably downcast forcefulness... oh yeah, and those scarecrows, of course. And finally, in the closing "Collapse of the Fallen Throe," the band revisits their doom/death roots with a positively majestic riff to go with a nightmarish set of words - all very metal. In sum, The Pale Haunt Departure breaks much needed new ground for November's Doom, who were in danger of sounding too derivative of other artists, of late.
What's everyone thoughts on this?
