Departing Dusk – Autumn’s Cold Embrace
Independent – 2010
Departing Dusk is the gothic/death/doom metal project of Dave L, known for Ancient Prophecy, Grave Abandoned and Wretched Humanity. Autumn’s Cold Embrace is Departing Dusk’s first release – and a self-release at that. That’s definitely not to say that it isn’t terrible. It’s rather well-produced. Starting with the first song “Epilogue”, you can definitely see the gothic influences with the ethereal keys kicking things off. Also, Dave’s vocal style for this song is melancholically clean vocals. And his lyrics really show the despair that’s a trademark of funeral doom:
“If I could do it all over again
Would I still travel this path of pain?”
In the next song “Dry Bones”, Dave uses a low gravelly, almost gurgling vocal style. He switches between the two styles throughout the album which gives it a nice mix of vocals. “Autumn’s Cold Embrace” is the longest song on the album (just under 11 minutes) and is even slower than the previous songs. It starts off softly with keys and guitar and slowly builds over most of the song until it ends with a very emotive guitar solo. “Break of Sorrow” has a classic doom sound to it, similar to Place of Skulls. It’s similar enough to some song that you know you’ve heard before but it isn’t which is very refreshing. Overall, this is a really solid doom album with elements of death and gothic metal. And considering this is Departing Dusk’s first release, I think we all can look forward to some more quality doom in the near future.
[rating:6/7]
Reviewed by Jeff de los Santos
