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Fatal Embrace > Shadowsouls' Garden > Reviews
Fatal Embrace - Shadowsouls' Garden

Swedish Melogloom - 81%

lostalbumguru, November 12th, 2023
Written based on this version: 1997, CD, Candlelight Records

Shadowsouls' Garden is a very original melodeath album from the late 90s, that has extra bits of doom thrown in, and really belongs in the 1991-1993 period. Despite coming late to the game, Fatal Embrace deliver a fine slab of Dark Tranquility style melodic death metal, replete with odd time signatures, excellently produced drums, and a coffin-load of great guitar-lines, and an eccentric bassist who more or less does whatever he wants even if it's playing bass for the band next door in the rehearsal studio.

The vocals are baritone death rasps and occasionally some Messiah Marcolin style moans and groans. Fatal Embrace were at the time considered to be a little bit closer to black metal than they actually are. Whatever black metal actually is, it has a certain feeling, and while doomy misery is overabundant on Shadowsouls' Garden, the music is 85% melodic death metal. There are mid-paced blast-beats, lolloping double bass drumming, and in general, the riffs and song structures are sombre, and full of wobble and glitches. You can tell these Swedish metal guys, also knew all about 1970s prog rock of the harder kind, and there are plenty of Iron Maiden influences creeping in too. The Swedish melodeath sound is built out of Iron Maiden memories after all. The 1997 release date of Shadowsouls' Garden is quite strange. There was still a touch of hippie melodeath in Dark Tranquility's The Mind's I, and proggy melodeath was still on the go with Noctes, Rotting Christ and other bands in the late 90s. In general though, the movement was towards black metal, towards Gothic and industrial sounds. This sweep to the ultra-clean, ultra modern took place, in spurts, in about 18 months between mid 1997 and late 1999.

This isn't to disparage Fatal Embrace at all, because what they're up to is a little more unique than a lot of melodeath. If you want In Flames circa 1996, but with doomy overtones and nods to Dream Theater, and the influences of Dream Theater, then Shadowsouls' Garden is an overlooked gem that'd look great on your shelf beside your other classic melodeath CDs.

You wish the band had pushed harder on the heavier riffs in weird timings. There are a few too many loose moments of spoken growls and acoustic guitars redolent of Dark Tranquility's folkier early material. Fatal Embrace are at their best working with elements of doom, and faster more randomly timed melodeath riffs, stop-start, stop-start, key change. That said, there's nothing terrible on Shadowsouls' Garden, just a few slower moments which feel a little trite. It's not Crime of the Century. Lyrically, Fatal Embrace are slightly at sea, with a little more muddling than you'd like, and again suffering somewhat with Dark Tranquility's earlier flowery prose. Keep it simple, keep it tidy thematically, and if you're Swedish, focus on your own native poetry and history, and your own Nordic tongue. Getting your ideas down in English is easy in one way, but making English work lyrically is harder than it seems. Metal suffers in this regard. A little less now everyone speaks Internet English, but back in the 90s, a certain clumsy charm persisted.

The production is quite clear and punchy on Shadowsouls' Garden, and the drumming is especially sharp. There's nothing awful here, and the only low points are some derivative song-writing elements, and slightly out of focus lyrics. The overall quite unusual song-writing and tasty blend of doomy melodeath is worth a spin, and you're certainly pleased to see Fatal Embrace active again in the 2020s after a long break. Their first album proper isn't quite excellent, but it is very good, and quite original. Worth a backtrack, and a reassessment. Actually, it was never assessed much in the first place; maybe it was out of time, and a tiny bit too weird.

An odd aspect of Shadowsouls Garden is that it improves slightly towards the end, after an excellent opening track, Our Rotten Thirst. Drowned in the Crossway Water is a really interesting life-death-life number, and While Heaven Stood Seasonless and Dead is an epic, slightly heart-breaking, 8 minute closer, full of doom, gloom, melancholic despair.

Godless breaths were frozen to lacerate thy skin
The sanctity was rended by sin
The vasting radiance embraced the faceless creed
As the sky was desolated and left to bleed


Shadowsouls' Garden? Well, it's where most of us belong anyway.

Shadowsouls' Garden - 88%

Flixx, July 5th, 2009

Fatal Embrace crafts an interesting mix of melodic death and black metal that’s reminiscent of early Opeth and In Flames but has unfortunately been mostly overlooked. I was lucky enough to catch their track “Drowned in the Crossway Water” on the Blackend III compilation, and I knew then that I was hearing something special. The guitar work is very melodic, with the guitars mostly utilizing harmonized tremolo leads and occasionally churning some deep heavy power chords in unison. The band also makes use of the intermittent acoustic break, offering up some haunting folk inspired melodic passages. The music mostly operates in the familiar minor keys of the other melodic death bands of that time.

Song construction is satisfyingly unpredictable, as the band completely avoids any kind of verse-chorus structure. Instead, the riffs and passages just flow into one another, usually seamlessly, though occasionally feeling a little patched together with the aforementioned acoustic breaks. Rarely are any sections repeated in a song, and if they are, they are reworked to sound fresh. As for the rhythm section, the drum work is solid and varied, never hanging on a certain beat for too long. The bass a little lost in the mix, but it’s not a grievous flaw. The vocals really shine on this album, due in part to the number of guest vocalists that appear. Vocals range from raspy shrieks to mournful clean singing to wet corpse growls.

The album loses some points because many of the passages sound a little too similar. The band makes so many changes that it feels at times like the riffs could be interchangeable from song to song. This makes the album blend together rather than sound like a collection of discrete songs. Still, this is not necessarily a bad thing - the group clearly had a lot of creativity to exercise, as indicated by the sheer number of riffs on this record. Overall, this is a very solid release, that doesn’t take long to grow on you and holds up after many repeated listens - a rare combination.

Lost in the frenzy - 90%

SirMichaelJ, February 15th, 2007

This is another band that came out during the melodic death eras birth that seemed to have been completely neglected. Maybe because their sound was just a year or so to late. Sounding similar to Dark Tranquillitys "Sky Dancer" or In Flames "Lunar Strain" this release is superb mix of thrash, death, and black. If this could have been released a year earlier this band might still be together today.

There are many highlights on this album. The guitars chime melody throughout the entire album, most of the time its a clear high melody, very similar to power metal, but with a black riff style. The drumming is a little shotty because the recording quality, but the double bass is is relentless, the blast beats full of fury, and the beats are played ouyt perfectly. The bass again like the drums, are hindered by the production, but if you like bass as I do youll notice every second of it. The vocals are very, almost eerily similar to Tomas Linburgs. There are many guest vocals from friends of the band that appear in the album. These range from a ear wretched shriek to a bellow that rumbles the body. All around these guys are a talented group of individuals, but never seem to hit it off.

Path of Virtues is one of my highlights. It starts off with the riff on the album, it just sticks with you. This song for some reason seems to stick out quality wise, all instrumentations are heard and a presence. This song also has one of the guest vocals that really add to the mood. The solo on this song, and much of the album is very short, but doesent BS you with a bunch of filler. Every note is there for a reason and not there to impress, there to make a valuable addition to the song.

Another highlight is As Heaven Stood Seasonless And Dead. This has what appears to be multiple vocals in the whole song. Some tempo changes that range from Doom slow, to black metal fast. This song also has some rememberable riffs in it. Which of coarse makes it a highlight. This song just has you wanting to hit repeat as soon as it ends. The best thing about this song is the length. over 7 minutes, not a second of it boring.

This is one of MANY bands lost to the ages because of the little exposure. If you can manage to get your hands on this gem do it, you will not regret it at all.