lukretion
Back in March, Layered Reality Productions released this very interesting debut album by US symphonic metal band Threads of Fate. Don’t let the band’s debutante status fool you, though. Threads of Fate’s line-up is comprised of musicians who had important experiences in other metal acts before they joined forces here. The band is the brainchild of vocalist John Pyres, who played keyboards for Among the Giants and Lycanthro. Keyboards and orchestrations are in the capable of hands of Vikram Shankar, whose work with Redemption, Carthagods and most recently Silent Skies has attracted lots of praise in the specialized press. Shankar also plays bass on the album, while Jack Kosto (Seven Spires) handles the guitar work and is also in charge of mixing and mastering. His Seven Spires bandmate Chris Dovas appears as session drummer.
Broadly speaking, The Cold Embrace of the Light falls into the symphonic metal category, although the album covers a lot of ground, bringing in multiple influences and experimenting with diverse styles. Cinematic and orchestral music is certainly one of them, as Shankar’s layered keyboards paint a rich symphonic tapestry that weaves classical and filmscore music together with a contemporary rock/metal approach. There is a strong focus on epic but melancholic melodies, bringing to mind dark progressive/power metal bands like Kamelot and Evergrey. At the same time, there are also influences from extreme metal, blackened death metal in particular, that are manifest in Pyres’ expressive growls and in the occasional explosions of blast beats in the songs’ most intense passages. Doom metal is another influence, as the tempos are often dilated and the album is drenched in a feeling of moody melancholia that reminds me of acts like Swallow the Sun. As I said, the album covers a lot of ground, which is what made it so interesting and appealing to me as soon as I first listened to it.
Digging deeper brings even more satisfaction. I really liked the songs’ rich harmonic structures created by Shankar’s opulent keyboard arrangements and Kosto’s clever guitar work that alternates groovy rhythmical riffs to contrapuntal melodic playing. It is clear that a lot of thoughts went into the songwriting and arrangements, as the band strives to stay as much as possible away from formulaic song structures. Pre-choruses, bridges, instrumental breaks, key and tempo changes are all used craftily to spice things up and retain the listener’s interest, for the most part successfully. I also appreciated the huge dynamics contained in nearly all songs that continuously swing from quiet piano/vocals passages to massive, wall-of-sound orchestrated climaxes. This confers a dramatic feel to the music that forms the perfect background for Pyres’ theatrical and heartfelt vocals. The complementary use of clean vocals and growls add further variety and dynamics to the music.
There’s a lot to dig your teeth into in this album, and a lot to like too, especially if you are sucker for deeply melodic music which explores dark and melancholic moods, as I am. However, I also believe that there is also room for improvement here, in order to make the leap from good album to masterpiece. First, I feel that Pyres’ vocals and vocal melodies are somewhat the album’s weak link. This is paradoxical given that the record places so much emphasis on the vocals. And just to be clear, Pyres is a competent singer so don’t expect any cringe-worthy vocal performance here. My issue with Pyres’ vocal lines lies mostly in the way his cleans are constructed and performed. There is a sense of stiffness and monotony in the clean vocal melodies that I think comes from the fact that he often sticks very rigidly to the beat, without moving much around it This, and the frequent reliance on long sustained notes, fairly narrow contours and limited resonance, introduces a sense of weariness and sameness as one progresses through the album that is difficult to shake off. This negative impression is further reinforced by the fact that many of the songs are based on similar musical ideas and explore essentially the same mood. I said earlier that Threads of Fate put a lot of effort in spicing things up, which is true and really commendable. But it’s also true that about two-thirds of the songs here exploit the same idea of starting with a quiet/moody verse and slowly building up to a massive, tear-jerker chorus, which grows tiresome after a while. This is why I particularly appreciated songs like “The Horrors Within” and “Love Held Hands with Hatred” that bring in slightly different atmospheres (the malign, black metal interjections in “The Horrors Within”) and rely on alternative songwriting approaches (the fast, aggressive “Love Held Hands with Hatred”).
I would not want my last paragraph to be taken as too negative, though, because I did truly enjoy The Cold Embrace of the Light, to the point that I purchased the physical CD even though I had already access to the promo. It’s a quality release that shows a lot of potential and that will appeal to a wide and diverse range of metalheads, from doom lovers to prog aficionados. There’s just a few more steps to be taken to project Threads to Fate into the stratosphere, and I firmly believe that the band have all the compositional and playing skills to get there with their next album.