Style: Melodic death metal, symphonic metal, progressive metal (mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Septicflesh, Orphaned Land, Fleshgod Apocalypse, Haggard
Review by: Francesco
Country: England, UK
Release date: 1 September 2024
Immaterial Eden is the debut release from Melehan, a solo project of UK-native Charles Phillip Withall. An incredibly ambitious first offering, Immaterial Eden blends influences from symphonic metal and melodic death metal with intricate musicianship and engaging compositional structure to create an immense sound. From ecclesiastical choirs and lonesome trombone, to reverberant timpani and haunting, rich piano, this album takes you on a journey through massive soundscapes. Glue it all together with tight riffing and furious drumming, and you have one of the most interesting releases of the year.
Withall’s musicianship can in no way be overstated. He is credited as performing everything on the album, and he competently navigates his way around glockenspiels, synthesizers, strings, horns, drums; you get the idea. The man’s some type of savant—like Rain Man, but for metal songwriting. Immaterial Eden has so many standout moments in its forty-seven minute runtime I can hardly remember them all – but some of my favourites are the trance synth lead in “The Cost of Being Alive” (an element which is sadly never reintroduced), the Italian canto in “The Dark Prince”, and the melancholy solo horn section in “The Giants’ Gaze, Pt. I”.
The album flows from straight-forward melodic death metal sections, to flamenco-inspired classical guitar passages, to more symphonic metal crescendos and codas without ever breaking a stride – I’m reminded a lot of an Orphaned Land or Septicflesh with more of a western classical sensibility, maybe similar to but not as frenetic as Fleshgod Apocalypse. The compositions are riveting, and the symphony instruments add a layer of complexity and sound amazing – no terrible MIDI patches detected here. And the horns are played so well that one struggles to tell if it’s an expression controller or the real thing. I also commend the lyricism, which for the most part is thought-provoking and esoteric. Thematically very introspective, Immaterial Eden touches on despair and apathy in the human condition with rather cryptic prose, but sometimes delves into the more mythological or even theological, as in the Latin responsory “O vos omnes” quoted in “The Dark Prince”.
Still, no great album is without fault. One of the qualms I had with Immaterial Eden was with the inclusion of an overabundance of melodrama when sometimes the clean vocals are allowed to take precedence. The clean singing (which reminds me somewhat of Borknagar and ex-Dimmu Borgir vocalist ICS Vortex1) might be the weakest part of this album as some of the harmonies are pitchy to the point of being wildly discordant2, and I wonder if for all his merit Withall wouldn’t benefit from someone else taking over the clean vocal duties. On a similar note, the intro to “The Cathedral in the Sand” breaks the flow of what is overall a very strongly paced album with solo reverberant piano and lamenting vocals singing about haunted cemeteries of the mind and shrivelled leaves… Maybe it’s just me who doesn’t like emotional ballads in his death metal, but I always found myself skipping to the heavy part. And then there’s the inaudible bass playing. Not to say that this is an album where the bass is meant to shine, but it does become kind of a trope at this point.
In spite of that, Immaterial Eden is a super impressive one-man endeavour, and I think I would struggle to find other solo projects of this caliber. The blending of genres is expertly accomplished in a way that seems almost effortless. I would love to know if our man Withall has a background in music because this is such an impeccably well put-together work that juggles so many moving parts it’s like a circus act. This album runs better than my city’s transit system, voted Best Transit System in North America in 20173. A worthwhile listen for any lover of progressive metal and melodic death or symphonic metal.
Recommended tracks: “The Cost of Being Alive”, “The Dark Prince”, “The Giants Gaze, Pt. II”
You may also like: Godiva, Sakis Tollis, Mencea
Final verdict: 9/10
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page
Label: Independent / Unsigned
band in question is:
– Charles Phillip Withall (everything)
