Lets get off on a good footing here. This album is one of the best things my ears have experienced in MANY a year. In fact, it’s only nearing May and I’m pretty certain this will still be my album of the year come Christmas time.
Draconian’s previous release “Where Lovers Mourn” (also their first official debut via Napalm Records) showed lots of promise – but was nonetheless a bit of a mixed bag. For a band having been on the scene for some years, and having several demos floating around of exceedingly high quality, the finished result on their first release was a little too “polished” for my liking. Not only this, but for some reason older material had now been re-recorded with far too much female vocalisation – so much so that some of the songs were saturated with it – meaning that the harsh growls of singer Anders Jacobsson hardly ever got a look-in, at least without female warbling over the top to drown him out.
With “Arcane Rain Fell” Draconian have addressed all these issues, and at the same time excelled in everything that has come before. The female vocals rather wisely take more of a backseat role this time round, allowing for the powerful vocals of Anders to be far more prominent, with the sweetly elegant tones of Lisa Johansson complimenting the sound beautifully, rather than saturating it. The guitar riffs are ten times meatier - creating ground-shaking doom as it should be done - but still managing to keep those feelings of “Epic” and “Elegant” finely intact. My love of this album is most likely due their move away from being just “Gothic Metal”, with your standard “Guy/Girl” warbling, and onto a far more Doom Metal sound. Fans of your standard “B & B” style may find the slow, grinding guitar riffs apparent here a little hard to stomach initially, but you will be rewarded for extra listens.
There is barely a bad moment on this album – “A Scenery of Loss”, “The Apostacy Canticle”, “Daylight Misery” and “Heaven Laid in Tears” all being perfect slabs of glorious Doom, equal in both force and power as they are to beauty and elegance. The band aren’t afraid to show their influences either – fans of MY DYING BRIDE will have no trouble in recognising the homage to “The Cry of Mankind” during the middle section of the gorgeous “Heaven Laid in Tears”.
Things perhaps become a little less memorable for penultimate track “The Everlasting Scar”, but things soon pick up again for the long awaited reworking of the demo song “Death, Come Near Me” - which clocks in at an impressive 15 minutes, and closes the album in a particularly epic fashion. My only gripe with this song, is after hearing all the hype about how fabulous it would be from long-time fans, it perhaps doesn’t stand quite as “head and shoulders above” other material as much as I was led to believe. This is not a bad thing of course - merely a testament to the quality of the new material.
Whilst I could sit here and heap praise all day, and use phrases like “Doom–Laden”, “Epic” and “Elegance” until the cows come home, I shall merely finish off by saying
make your life better, do something nice for your ears – and get this album. “Arcane Rain Fell” is a thing of beauty - and utterly essential to any doom fan that hasn’t had a frontal lobe lobotomy.
Standout Tracks: A Scenery of Loss, The Apostacy Canticle, Heaven Laid in Tears.
Overall Score: 9 /10
