AEGIRSON — Dark Chapters (review)

AEGIRSON — Dark Chapters album cover EP · 2000 · Gothic Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
3/5 ·
Time Signature
Leaving darkness...

Genre: gothic metal

This is one of the earlier releases by French goth-metallers Aegirson, and thus whenever their musical ventures do not work that well, it is forgivable.

I guess that this EP release falls under the subgenre of gothic metal, sometimes referred to, ridiculously, as "beauty-and-the-beast-metal", because it combines clean, and often soft, female vocals with harsh male vocals. 99,9% of the time, beauty-and-the-beast-metal does not work for me because it tends to become too formulaic and, well, cheesy in a pseudo-romantic way.

But Aegirson do a good job of it on this EP which draws on black metal, power metal, symphonic metal, and traditional metal. There are the sweeping romantic keyboards to be sure, and, at times, it becomes too much, but it is all backed up by guitar riffing which, mostly, draw the music in a harder direction, which I think works most of the time (although some of the riffage itself lacks originality, but never mind that). The female vocals are average, to say the least - not in the sense that she's not a good vocalist, because she is, but it's just that she sounds a lot like so many other beauty-and-the-beast-metal vocalists.

In all, this release is one of the better releases within its subgenre of metal music, with both strengths and flaws. The production is a bit raw for its kind, but that just adds to the originality, seeing that this subgenre of metal typically dictates squeaky clean productions. I think that fans of various types of metal as well as long standing fans of gothic metal might like it, while 'en vogue' fans of gothic metal might actually not be able to appreciate it for its rawness and influences from other subgenres.
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