Escape

I came to listen to this EP long after listening to the last three full length’s of Callenish Circle, one of my absolute favorite melodic death metal bands and I must say I don’t find this essential at all. On the contrary, this EP can be considered a mere, harmless, addition to the band’s discography. It’s not absolute crap, but it’s not worthy either. It makes me wonder if this is how their obscure first album sounds like, and that means I don’t really want to know. As a Callenish Circle fan, I might listen to that one day, but truth is, I don’t listen to this (almost) ever.

The main reason why this EP is so skip-able as a whole is that its two best songs, “Silent Tears” and “Broken”, were re-recorded for their next album, the decent though primeval Graceful… Yet Forbidding. And those versions are way better than the ones here. In the case of “Silent Tears”, the opener here, this version is still pretty good but feels overlong and too slow at parts, and in fact that’s exactly how’s been improved for next album’s appearance, which is shorter by more than a minute, less repetitive and faster. “Broken” has the same problem, though not exactly the same. This version has a series of riffs and an interesting bass intervention (starting at the 0:59 mark) that was cut from its later adaptation, and though a decent section in its own right, it feels intrusive and a bit forced into the song, making the Graceful… Yet Forbidding incarnation more to the point. Also, both songs will benefit from the superior production of that release.

That leaves us with the bizarre, short instrumental “Epacse” and last song, “Mirror of Serenity”. Do they save this EP? Not really. “Epacse” is basically filler, sounding like a jungle-like atmospheric track from an 80’s African themed bad film, with its minimal tribal percussion and some noises that can be either the shout of a jungle clan or the bawl of a strange type of monkey that likes to appear in melodeath EP’s. “Mirror of Serenity” closes the album, and it’s a fairly decent piece of Callenish Circle early style of melodeath. It’s the fastest track here, though not fast by any means. It has a nice pounding rhythm, reminiscent of Iron Maiden, and then shifts into melodic black territory not unlike Old Man’s Child early stuff, with cascading atmospheric riffage. This would be the saving grace of this EP, if we didn’t take into account the other facts. Actually I wonder why they didn’t re-recorded this one as well. I guess that would’ve been cool.

So, musicianship is decent, though average and certainly not as good as the Circle guys would get in future releases. Paul’s vocals do sound a bit strange, a bit forced. But sometimes they sound more inhuman than on later albums, and here he even seems to venture into screechy black metal territory. I think he was still experimenting with his vocal capabilities and developing his style. All the other guys perform just ok, and the production, though far from perfect, doesn’t seem to affect that performance, neither negative or positively.

I can’t really recommend this EP. Period. It’s really and obsolete and unnecessary release. Perhaps, if you really consider yourself a Callenish Circle fan and feel curious about the humble beginnings of this now sadly defunct band, you might want to check this out, but be warned! There’s really not much here that escapes the label of “forgettable”.

Still craving for more bands that fulfill my quite high expectations, I discovered Callenish Circle. I´ve been going through a lot of releases of CC and this EP is my absolute favourite, because you can find catchy songs and a variety of different structures. I´m not the biggest supporter of track-by-track reviews, but this EP contains so many fucking great tracks that it would be unfair to the band leaving out just one compliment that this EP absolutely deserves.

The first song I listened to was “Broken” and I was already hypnotized by the sound of the guitar and structure how they put together the song. Catchy and up-beat melody, drums not too loud and a not too dominating voice. Perfect for a melodic death listener. I thought nothing could top this track, (meanly because I listened to about 50 times before getting a bit bored and becoming interested in other work) until I tried to focus on the other pieces. There is one negative thing I should mention but I´ll get back to that later.

“Silent Tears” has some similarities to “Broken” It´s got a nice melody, quite catchy, but no wonder the riff sticks to your mind like glue, the riff is being played more than 20 times! But I can´t complain about this track because “Broken” is even worse. That is the negative aspect I put on record before. That one riff that contains not more than 5 seconds and is played all through the whole song, repeating again and again. Luckely it is a quite catchy and melodic riff, otherwise I could not stand listening to that song more that once.

Escape is a computer created, atmospheric song and I have to admit, it was weird listening to it for the first time, because it is not really what I had expected and reminded me more of a relaxation cassette with sounds of the rainforest. What this has to do in this EP, I seriously don´t know, but hey, it´s something new! The whole EP is kind of filled with atmospheric moments trying to create a particular mood. Mirror of Serenity departs from the others. The only thing which did not accomplish my expectations were the so-called “growls”, it seemed that Patrick put in some effort but trying to understand him was the same as trying to make my cat bark, simply impossible. I have to admit, I´m not the biggest fan of his vocals but the guitar makes up for that.

I know, I have wrote down a lot of negative aspects, probably because I´m very hard to please but this EP proved me that there is enough other great stuff around to leave my Soilwork CDs in a corner of my room for a while.