BILOCATE — Summoning The Bygones (review)

BILOCATE — Summoning The Bygones album cover

Album · 2012 · Melodic Death Metal

3/5 · 2012-06-27
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Summoning the Bygones is the third album from Jordanian metal act Bilocate. Bilocate are a band I mostly see branded as either a doom metal act or an oriental metal act. Maybe the group’s first two releases can be considered as either of these things but in the case of Summoning the Bygones both only make up a small measure of the sound Bilocate have produced. For the most part we’re dealing with a melodic death metal album, of the progressive variety. The album features a guest appearance from Dan Swanö (Edge of Sanity, Star One, Nightingale et al) and also a Paradise Lost cover.

I’m just going to come right out and say here that Summoning the Bygones is a very befuddling album to me. Right from the off it hits me with what I can quickly tell is something much more than your typical melodic death metal, and this leaves me thinking that the album is about to take me on one hell of a ride in the way that only a metal band from one of the more unusual of places (in this case Jordan) for metal bands to originate can do. The sound is progressive, with keyboards/piano used prominently but tastefully in accordance to the core melodic death sound and I have to say that at a glance, Summoning the Bygones screams masterpiece potential.

But after the band has delivered a few tracks I’m left with the inescapable feeling that all there is left for the album to do is to meander its way through the remainder of its tracks until it’s conclusion over seventy minutes later with the three part A Desire to Leave. I have to confess that in my early listens of the album I couldn’t even get through it in a single sitting. Maybe the issue is that it’s around seventy-two minutes in length and it outstays its welcome somewhat. I think with the sound Bilocate have produced here, which somehow I can’t help not praise despite my feelings towards the album overall, that the album would have more impact if they shaved a good twenty or more minutes off its running time. Either that or an increase in the progressive influences to throw a few more curveballs to justify the length. Every time I try to get more into Summoning the Bygones I’m met with the same feelings though. It wows me at first, and then way before its end it’s simply boring me.

It’s not that they hit their listeners with their best stuff early on and then leave the rest of the album filled up with weaker tracks because that really isn’t the case. Taking a break anywhere in the album and starting it again later revitalises that wow factor of the music straight away, the problem simply is that in one go, for reasons that it’s difficult to put a finger on, Summoning the Bygones simply doesn’t work for me.

This is a real shame because even with this issue I can tell that Bilocate put a lot of good ideas into this album, but somewhere along the line that crucial spark that makes albums special got left behind and we’re left with an album that for all its evident positives just doesn’t seem to go anywhere. Still, Summoning the Bygones is still very much a cut above the majority of melodic death metal acts that are simply content to work within the Gothenburg sound without bringing anything exciting to the table so if nothing else Bilocate gets full marks for effort with this release. An above average rating seems fair.

6.4/10

(Originally written for Heavy Metal Haven (http://metaltube.freeforums.org))