THE PROPHECY — Salvation (review)

THE PROPHECY — Salvation album cover Album · 2013 · Doom Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
4/5 ·
adg211288
It’s inevitable that even when you’re not familiar with an artist’s music, as I wasn’t with that by The Prophecy from the United Kingdom, that when you start reading a lot of hype for that artist you’ll start having high expectations of them. Quite often I find doing so can end in one big disappointment but fortunately that is not the case with The Prophecy and their latest full-length album, Salvation, which is their fourth overall. It could easily have been the usual story for me, since this doom metal band plays exactly the kind of doom metal I find difficult to take in, but to my pleasant surprise after a little perseverance to get into it I’ve found Salvation to be the sort of album that draws me in with its bleak, pondering atmosphere.

The Prophecy’s brand of doom metal is characterised by mostly long songs featuring slow and drawn our passages of music using both a heavy doom metal distorted guitar style and a clean tone guitar style. The vocals by Matt Lawson are primarily sung with a very melodic clean voice which fits in with that overall bleak atmosphere I mentioned. But just when you think The Prophecy might be getting complacent to milk this atmosphere for all it’s worth they go and stir things up by turning their pace up a gear into a much more distinct and direct death-doom metal style, complete with very deep growling vocals. There is also an underlying progressive quality to the music, so even with you’re dealing with the over ten minute tracks that The Prophecy has favoured here (Reflections being the one exception) there’s always a creative spark that keeps the music going.

A side-effect of playing music like this is that there are many times within Salvation’s five tracks (which still adds up to 52:05 worth of music) where things do seem as if they aren’t going anywhere and I’ll be honest, if you’re at all like me when it comes to doom metal, it’s going to be a difficult album to get into for a number of reasons, not least because quite a sizeable portion of the 14:09 minute opening title track will pass before The Prophecy even gives you a hint of the doom metal that lurks within the release. That said I’ve come to appreciate Salvation a lot quicker than some other albums I’ve tried in the genre, and for me that’s a clear showcase of The Prophecy’s talents. A great album tier rating is deserved.

82/100

(Originally written for Heavy Metal Haven (http://metaltube.freeforums.org/the-prophecy-salvation-t2798.html))
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