RISE OF AVERNUS — L'appel du vide (review)

RISE OF AVERNUS — L'appel du vide album cover

Album · 2013 · Doom Metal

3/5 · 2017-05-25
aglasshouse

MMA Reviewer's Challenge: Album selected by 666sharon666

If I were to say one genre of metal that I'm most connected with, it would likely be doom metal. It's a scene that I love and I believe has the highest amount of hidden and obscure talent currently in the metal world. This is not only due to their heaviness alone as some might think, but due to their creativity. Much of the underground doom scene contains very subversive and skilled musicians, many of which seek to blend doom with a variety of other genres of music, including but not limited to folk, stoner rock, and, in Australia's Rise of Avernus' case, progressive/symphonic metal.

Now, I'm no fan of progressive metal. In fact I believe that in recent years it's become the practical bane of creativity and experimentation, and a genre that has a formula so easy to cut and paste with very little effort. Sure, the musicianship is often good, but sometimes it just seems it's getting put to waste by inventing these sonic landscapes that prematurely age themselves by having the most cheesy structures imaginable. Not only that, but I believe progressive metal is a very hard genre to fuse with others because of it's overbearing nature, i.e. it will thematically downplay whatever other sound the band was trying to accomplish. So you take, like Rise of Avernus has done on their first full-length album, L'appel du vide, progressive metal and doom metal and combine them. It should be clear this is no easy task; doom metal and progressive metal are thematically opposed. One is neanderthalically crude, often channeling brutality without a second thought of subtlety, the other being a genre based (in theory) around complexity and innovation, along with extreme attention to detail. Looking at this they seem antithetical, but it wouldn't be impossible to fuse them. In fact, many bands have already like Katatonia and Opeth, and they did relatively well themselves. In general however, Rise of Avernus passes the ballot pretty alright.

Rise of Avernus focus their assault mainly on the aspects of massive symphonic crescendos and epic melody. This album in particular has a theme of a rally between operatic-like symphonies, represented by clean vocalist Cat Guirguis, and the rough, more archaic doom side with the growling Ben Vanvollenhoven. Sometimes this contrast works in earnest, especially on 'The Mire', a song that goes through a variety of different movements even being one of the shorter songs. 'The Mire' is particularly good in its subtle use of the orchestra, an element that many of the other songs on this album are bit too on-the-nose in their usage of.

The biggest problem with L'appel du vide is that it just isn't very interesting. Sure, there's a lot of material packed into one album and it's fairly progressively eclectic, but it's just doesn't pique my interest to the extent that I believe it should. While the orchestral elements are very neat and add a layered feel to the sound, it's still fairly static given the weapons in its arsenal. I find the best parts on this album are Guirguis' piano interludes with string accompaniment, and the metal elements are just a bit too roughly coincided with them. Not only that, but Guirguis' voice isn't that great either. She can hit the high notes fairly well, but she lacks the dynamic quality needed to convey and This album would have worked much better as a simple classical album or maybe a symphonic rock album. But doom metal? I just think that ups the cheesiness a bit too much to where even I can't make excuses for it.

It's a very interesting fusion what Rise of Avernus have tried to work with here. Although I'm not too fond of this particular release, I won't deny I am intrigued towards a followup. I'll finish by saying that L'appel du vide is a good album with a hefty amount of shortcomings. Shortcomings that can be easily fixed with a subtler tone and a much less overly-bombastic attitude.