COMMUNIC — The Bottom Deep (review)

COMMUNIC — The Bottom Deep album cover Album · 2011 · Progressive Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
4/5 ·
Time Signature
In silence with my metal...

Genre: dark power metal with progressive tendencies

Power metal from Europe has received a bad reputation and is often criticized for being too lighthearted and silly and, worst of all, terribly cheesy. I don't mind metal which is lighthearted, but I am not too fond of too much cheesiness. Anyway, not all European power metal is lighthearted or silly or cheesy. Communic is a prime example of power metal from Europe with a very different atmosphere than the stereotypical one.

Communic delivers dark and quite heavy power metal with a melancholic feel and plenty of darkly epic atmosphere bolstered with progressive elements every now and then. But things never really get too grandiose, and there is absolutely no cheesiness or other Euro power metal sillinesses.

The guitars are downtuned, which means that this album has an overall quite heavy sound - there is a tendency to use clean guitars in the verses, and with the band performing these on downtuned guitars, even the melancholic and melodic verses have a certain oppressive darkness to them. Although there are plenty of awesome groovy and uptempo sections, heaviness is a characteristic of this album, and some tracks like "Denial" and "In Silence with my Scars" contain some almost doomy passages.

In addition to "Denial" and "In Silence With My Scars", mentionworthy tracks are "My Fallen", which is darkly melodic and contains some very nice classic-yet-different sounding riffage, and the darkly epic "Destroyer of Bloodlines" (another track with classic-yet-different riffs in it) as well as the more mellow, but no less dark, "Wayward Soul".

Oddleif Stensland's vocals are potent - and, with his darker register, more in the US power metal vein, but also with some quasi-operatic vibrato. His style of singing may be an acquired taste, but I certainly think he is a very gifted vocalist and that his powerful voice suits the nature of the music on this album very well; his singing certainly is one of the main contributors of the dark epicness mentioned above.

Recommended to fans of dark power metal everywhere.
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