Crypt of Silence – Beyond Shades

Last week I was poring over a list of new releases and saw the band name Crypt of Silence. I thought that was pretty cool sounding, so I looked the band up on YouTube to try to hear them. After a brief listen I started going back through all my promo emails looking to see if I had received anything on the band. Nada. I tried iTunes, but had no luck there either. I finally hit pay dirt at Bandcamp. For a mere $3.99 the album was mine.

Crypt of Silence is a Ukrainian death doom band and “Beyond Shades” is their recently released first album. While I was looking for the album it was hard to find much of anything at all about the band, but some time in the last few days a page has popped up on the band over at The Metal Archives, so I was able to find some little bit of information.

When I started listening to “Beyond Shades” these guys had me before I even heard any vocals. Granted, the vocals don’t show up until just after five minutes into the first song, but the music was so good that I wasn’t going to care how the vocals sounded.

Not that I had to worry, the vocals are really good too. For the most part they tend toward impressive harsh vocals that sound like they should leave the guys throat shredded, but he does some pretty impressive clean doom style vocals as well. This was the clincher; beautiful and melancholy metal music with very competent harsh and clean vocals? I am entirely sold on Crypt of Silence. I have been searching for a new album like this one, and now that I have found it I am going to be listening to this album incessantly for months.

There are only four songs on “Beyond Shades,” but two of them are over eleven minutes, one is over twelve and the final song is over 14 minutes. That means almost 50 minutes of music over four tracks. Nice!

There are all kinds of great doom-style guitar pieces, both clean and distorted. Long instrumental passages will lull you into a relaxed and depressive state, and then bam, the drums and harsh vocals will slam into you and shake you from your reverie. The mix of beauty and power is impressive. I like that the mix leaves all the different elements plenty of room to breathe; there is a feeling of big open spaces when listening to these songs with headphones.

Seriously, if you are at all into doom or death doom, you need to check out Crypt of Silence. I really do love this album. But I don’t expect you to take my word on it. Give a listen below to the album’s opening track “Walk With My Sorrow.” Enjoy!