Progressive technical Death Metal from UK third album 2012 in the vein of early Opeth albums recomended!!
The third De Profundis album, "The Emptiness Within", was recorded at Unit 2 Studio / Dead Dog Studio (London, UK) and mixed at Davout Studios (Paris, France) during November/December 2011.
The third release, and second full-length, from London’s progressive black/doom hybrid De Profundis is a rather impressive beast, managing to develop their extreme form of metal together into a cohesive, tightly-controlled unit that is far more memorable than the sum of its parts.
After the ambient noise intro of ‘From the Depths,’ the album kicks into fine gear with ‘Delirium,’ utilizing some wicked time-signatures, introspective and often-times outright melodic guitar-work and a start-and-stop pace in regards to blast-beats under the entire song to offer a nice highlight, it’s lengthy piece offering a healthy backbone to keep everything moving along as the song winds its way through. Second track ‘Silent Gods’ is another winner, offering more traditional Black Metal-esque blasting during its rousing opening before it kick-starts a series of frenzied riffing, intricate bass work and some of the records more furious vocals, which are carried over to ‘This Wretched Plague’ in wholesale, offering three extremely great tracks to start off. Even first single ‘Twisted Landscapes’ carries some nice momentum forward, with some extended interludes offering some fine guitar-work and up-tempo drumming, carried along by a wave of ebb-and-flow backing vocals that create an undeniable atmosphere within the song, plus as it’s the first single the riffing is quite memorable and offers the few hints of melody found within their sound.
The second half of the album does lag somewhat, still containing quality material but definitely not up to the standard of the first half’s tracks. ‘Release’ is the album’s first slightly disappointing track, spending far too much time in a middling section than in more familiar areas explored by the band, despite a ripping guitar solo and a frenzied final half to try to gather some energy back lost earlier, but it’s still a bit too long for its own good. More traditional is ‘Dead Inside,’ with its energized pace, thrashing tempo and pounding, wall-of-sound drums that come off far more vicious than anything else on the record, only this time the introspective moments work which thankfully isn’t that often. Instrumental ‘Parallel Existence’ is the major contributing factor here to this one coming down some, with an intro far more introspective and melody to mesh with the extreme stuff offered elsewhere and feels better suited to the end of the album than elsewhere. Album-ender ‘Unbroken’ is another weaker track, sounding good but not really distinguishing itself from the others all that much.
There’s one growing trend in the record that quickly becomes apparent, and that’s the band’s off-kilter approach to traditional Black Metal. This isn’t the sort of music that appears to be imitating what Norway produced in the early 90s, instead offering extreme Progressive Metal with Black Metal-ish vocals, creating essential a rather unique and recognizable sound but one that isn’t all that traditional, whereas the band might be more at home with fans of a band like Opeth in the early part of the decade than those of a group like Mayhem or Marduk. This isn’t a knock on the band at all, but merely a bit of a cautionary word of warning that those expecting straight old-school Black Metal might be somewhat disappointed here
Sample: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
