CEMETERY OF SCREAM

The fourth disc from CEMETERY OF SCREAM broke a six-year silence — the band regrouped and recorded a full-length album, this time also changing their logo, or rather not changing but abolishing it, since the current one can hardly be called a logo — they simply wrote the name in italics and that's it. The horizontal cross that used to lie across the letters written in Gothic font looked far better. The album turned out to be quite stylistically diverse. In certain moments the music reminds us of recent KATATONIA, in others of AMORPHIS from the same period, some fragments even resemble ORPHANED LAND, and you can also find points of contact with alternative rock projects. The one problem is that while listening to this release, you constantly want to compare it to something, because many bands create in a similar vein with far greater success. The monotonous male clean vocals, occasionally with a slight rasp, periodic female vocal inclusions, plenty of keyboards, lots of acoustic guitar, periodic shifts from majestic, solemn rhythms to simplistic melodies — overall it's all decent enough, and there's nothing to fault. Perhaps if there were something to fault, it might somehow save the disc, but as it stands — a decent release, and that says it all. It conquers and captivates with nothing, and the measured pace of the music only aggravates the situation.