ECLIPSE OF THE SUN - HUNGARY

ECLIPSE OF THE SUN – BRAVE NEVER WORLD – SATANATH  
Eclipse Of The Sun is a Hungary-based white doom metal band that turned out better than one imagines. The band’s introduction and write-ups hinted at the kind of lousy nonsense bands like Orphanage or The Hu would release. This is not the best doom metal band ever, but fans of Paradise Lost, Anathema, My Dying Bride and even Candlemass will find songs here to soak in.
Vocal-wise, the singer is easy to understand. The black and white band photograph, the melancholy and gloomy hues and imagery and the children standing hand-in-hand before a monolith moan doom metal. The album’s title is an obvious play on ‘Brave New World’ and the lyrics to the title track speak of ‘roomes,’ which may be a misspelling as the song mentions “a room” earlier. The quartet has an actual and live drummer. The band does employ keyboards, but strictly and thankfully as background fodder. A song’s segment is awash in them during the rare moments when the keyboards are used for more than background fodder. The vocals oscillate between the morose and the growl, and sometimes feature both simultaneously, and the mentions of God and his believability hint at the act’s mindset.
The album kicks off with Pillars Of Creation (“Blessed Be Your Name”). This one has one of the more active keyboard passages and so is not the album’s best. The track has a hint of Candlemass buried within it. The members are not the best masters of their instruments, which ironically may work in the band’s favour. The song structures are hence kept simple and, as a side-effect, effective. The drumming of David Antal is weak though. He is a mere follower and contributes little else than keeping the rhythm. Things Called Life features a line where the singer clearly says, “writes on a wall,” but the lyric sheet has it as “writings on a wall.” The song shows more emotion. The title track is third and begins with a moment of speed and a good riff. The whiplash the listener gets is not owing to speed however. It is due to the distorted growls, the heavy riffs, the slow spoken passage and gothic inclinations all in the same song. Not A Symbol is a slow and morose song that is not much of a song actually. The vocals continue to mix it up, but the spoken words, the moaning, the background synthesizers and what sounds like a drum machine are uninteresting. Home is next and insists that we cannot exist without you as it speaks to mother Earth. It must suck to live in Hungary with a regressive president like Viktor Orban who is like adoring cow dong on the ground looking up to Donald Trump cheap suit. I crack myself up. Sorry, not supposed to. This is supposed to be a doom review. Let us move forward then. World Without Words is entirely too varied. It is slow to fast to heavy and occasionally brutal with hard riffing. Death Of Pan elects to triumph God over the evil Pan. This song brandishes an impressive guitar tone. Amusingly, it sounded like the band is chanting “God is a lie” when, after consulting the lyric sheet, it turned out singer Daniel Szollosi is in fact proclaiming that “God is alive.” The last song, entitled Era Of Sun, is a weak ending. The riff is pure rock and unexciting.
Come to think of it, Brave Never World is actually an appropriate album title here. The contradiction inherent in it speaks to a band that includes birds tweeting, cars honking, whispers and soft mellow passages next to growls, heavy riffs and crackling distortion. For my money the synthesizers and the spoken or whispered musings need to hold hands and jump into Lake Goth leaving the doom metal and heaviness behind for listeners to enjoy. – Ali “The Metallian”