Falls of Rauros – Key to a Vanishing Future
Release Date: 25th March 2022
Label: Gilead Media
Bandcamp
Genre: Doom Metal, Melodic Death Metal, Prog.
FFO: Borknagar, Hecate Enthroned.
Review By: David Oberlin
It is not very often that an album can present a refreshingly different take on a tired old formula, but the new Falls of Rauros tries and succeeds. And, given that the extreme metal genre has exhausted its material more than once. Over it’s nearly thirty-five years as an alternative to mainstream pop. The over saturation in the sea of tremolo picking and tempo changes is hard to shake. Like an oil spill to a sea lion.
Key to a Vanishing Future is the latest album from Portland’s Tolkien inspired blackened musical artists. And, a verifiable clusterfuck of talented songwriting. Where it has taken inspiration from sources outside the incestuous metal scene. Yet, you can hear the odd hark back to 90s true Norwegian black metal scene. But, by the end of the 90s even many of those artists were tired with producing the same washing machine technique. Key to a Vanishing Future is anything but a rehash.
The album sounds great, but the synth work really stands out. There are times when the strings sound encapsulates a strained relationship to the rest of the composition, but does not clip the focus. Which, is mainly the excellent guitar work that shifts and jumps between ostentatious inflections and demanding licks to more incendiary and trance like riffing. While the synth is used sparingly, it really helps to define the characteristic feeling of tension that this album shares.
Where the keyboards hint at the tonal dynamics of the album, the flavour is contained completely in the riffs. All the staple extreme genres get a look-in, but where Key to a Vanishing Future finds its own Chi is in the American Country style tuned to death metal. Which is by far the most interesting element of this album, and something the band can truly capitalise on.
(3 / 5)
