Style: Melodic Death Metal (harsh vocals)
Review by: Dan
Country: Sweden
Release date: 18 June, 2021
Over half a lifetime ago, I discovered Heartwork by British legends Carcass at my local CD store. It was the first metal album I heard that I immediately connected with, and it changed the course of my life forever. I listened to that album on repeat, and eventually sought out more music like it. I wound up digging deep through the first wave of melodic death metal to come out of Sweden. Bands like At The Gates, In Flames, and Dark Tranquillity, alongside Heartwork, helped to pioneer a style of music that was both accessible and extreme. The songs were melodic and singable, yet the vocals were harsh, the tones were distorted, and the drums were heavy. It was a perfect entry point into metal, and I loved it all. I followed guitarist Michael Ammott and found Arch Enemy, and not long after, was won over by Christian Älvestam’s enormous vocal performances in Scar Symmetry. I eventually diverged from this course and fully converted to prog when I discovered the mighty Opeth (by following Arch Enemy rhythm guitarist Fredrik Åkesson’s career), but my first true metal love was indeed melodic death metal.
Over time, as I realized how diverse and interesting the wealth of boundary-pushing music could be, I returned to my roots less and less, finding the note choices and song structures to be trite and predictable. The bands that I loved were churning out uninspired album after uninspired album, and I was much more taken by proggier upstarts and more and more extreme musicianship. Every once in a while, though, an album comes around that immediately rekindles my love for melodeath. The Lighthouse, the latest offering from mind-blowingly prolific Swedish melodeath mastermind Rogga Johansson’s band Eye of Purgatory has moments that are among the best that melodic death metal has to offer, but I can’t quite give it a full-throated endorsement.
We are halfway through 2021, and this is the ninth record that Johansson has been a part of just this year! As such, the quality of this record is pretty extraordinary. In the greater scheme of things, I think it falls a bit flat, for one primary reason.
Let’s just get this out of the way now: the vocals ruin the entire album for me. They’re competently performed, with good tone and they sit well in the mix, but the lyrics really aren’t that good, especially the album’s repeated choruses. “The lighthouse, shining light in the dark!” I mean, c’mon, what else would a lighthouse do? It’s like if a song were to emphatically scream “An airplane, flying high in the sky!” …it just feels like they could have done better, y’know? There are also some hasty moments in the production, but now I’m just nitpicking.
Every time I felt really engaged with this album was either at a transition point between riffs, or during moments that were either instrumental or nearly so. I can’t point to a single place where the vocals were the thing that made a particular passage great. In fact, most of the times I caught myself drifting off and tuning out were during the more vocal-heavy passages. Perhaps it’s the repetitive, flat instrumentation behind them, or the somewhat underwhelming songwriting and subpar lyrics, but boy do they detract from an otherwise phenomenal album.
Now onto the good: basically everything else is very good. The song structures are engaging and well-written, the riffs are solid, the drums are nice and heavy, and the keyboards are just the icing on the top. The whole package comes together extremely well, with good pacing and excellent transitions. There were plenty of moments that really grabbed me, whether during a melodic guitar solo, a rippin’ blastbeat passage, or an awesome keyboard layer. The songwriting does a great job with building tension without going too overboard into any particularly uncomfortable territories, but I have to admit it kind of all blends together and sounds very similar song to song.
There’s plenty of darker influences from black metal or melancholic melodeath sprinkled here and there though, which add a bit of needed diversity to the primary melodic death metal formulae. There is keyboard work in “Carved in a Stone Bleeding” that reminds me of passages of Entropia‘s Ufonaut, and melodic ideas in “Where Life Slowly Fades” that remind me of Daylight Dies. The blasts in “They Silently Await” are refreshing for the genre, and are a satisfying peak.
Besides my one primary gripe, this is very, very good melodic death metal. It’s heavy, not overindulgent, and well-balanced, with great performances all around. There are memorable passages, well-placed moments of phenomenal intensity, and excellent keyboard work, making this an entirely worthwhile listen. It does kind of all blend together, but at 35 minutes, doesn’t overstay its welcome.
Overall, The Lighthouse just doesn’t quite do it for me because, even after all these listens, the vocals still ruin it for me. My personal taste, however, shies away from vocal-centric music, so take my criticisms and rating here with a grain of salt – this is musically quite good, and I’m sure many will love it regardless.
Recommended tracks: Fornever to Awaken, Carved in a Stone Bleeding, Where Life Slowly Fades, They Silently Await
Recommended for fans of: In Flames, Dark Tranquillity, the lovechild of Daylight Dies and Obscure Infinity
Final verdict: 5/10
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Metal-Archives page
Label: Transcending Obscurity Records – Bandcamp | Website | Facebook
Eye of Purgatory is:
– Rogga Johansson (vocals, guitars)
– Taylor Nordberg (drums, lead guitars, keyboards)
– Jeramie Kling (bass)
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