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Bitterdusk > Spirits > Reviews
Bitterdusk - Spirits

Way too long. - 35%

caspian, November 27th, 2008

Bitterdusk are a decent enough band, and it's kind of hard to fault them for it but the singer sounds a lot -one hell of a lot- like that guy from Creed especially when his voice is in a similar range (which happens fairly often). Despite the fairly terrible first impression of Scott stapp, though, this is some pretty decent stuff.

The whole thing's a fairly odd mix of long stoner/doom jams, post-rockish sections and also some sort of late era MDB. It's not groundbreaking but nonetheless I've never really heard anything like it. 'Among the Trees' is a good enough example; it originally sounds like an outtake to MDB's newest but somehow morphs into a straight ahead stoner-y sort of groove- you don't really see it coming at all, and then the whole thing just changes into this slow doom dirge. It's all done with a fairly deft touch, these guys must've spent a fair bit of time pouring over arrangements.

Unfortunately subtlety and the aforementioned deft touch also make for a record that for the most part is fairly boring. There's a couple of problems with these records; most of them stem from the simple fact that things rarely get heavy enough, and the overwhelming sense of lethargy that's throughout most of the record makes things hard going. The singer and drummer sound fairly interested, the guitarist sounds like he's going to fall asleep. The leads will remind most guitarists of that kind of pointless noodling you do on the couch when you're half asleep; except for the fairly decent spacey guitar lines in 'Pagan Angel' they rarely go anywhere. Likewise, most of the riffs could be best described as prunes- they go in one end and then out the other extremely quickly. Excepting the fairly inspired, Trouble-ish intro to 'Awakening' (easily the best song on here) nothing here inspires you to headbang, and the only thing that gets particularly crushing or despairing would be the end of the final track (although better late then never).

It's also the most overlong album I've ever heard. You can see where these guys were coming from- they wanted to write some seriously epic doom tunes; some sort of sprawling masterpiece that the legends of the genre have pulled off from time to time. It's the typical problem that affects many a band in this genre- the desire to write deep and meaningful monoliths but seriously lacking song writing skills. It's just hopelessly meandering; riffs just float around aimlessly, there's no purpose or goal. To their credit it's mostly instrumental so at least there's not a heap of irritating vocals.

This isn't a terrible record though. Cut maybe a 3rd off this and you'd have some decent enough and fairly interesting doom. Bitterdusk seem to have a few ideas of their own which isn't something many bands can say; if their next album is more compact (or if they actually nail the whole 'really really long songs' thing) and they can ramp up the heaviness a bit then we'll have an excellent doom band on our hands. As it stands though this is a fairly boring record and I can't really recommend it to anyone, unless if you're keen on finding the most meandering record in existence.

excellent - 94%

mutiilator, September 25th, 2003

This new Bitterdusk release only extends the influence Chile holds on the global Doom scene. Joining Poema Arcanus and Mar de Grises, Bitterdusk emerge on a spectacular scale. Their overall sound is comparable to old Anathema. The music: varying in speed, with varying vocals. Minimal synthetics, or other tools of dilution - just a great voice superimposed on a wall of melodic sound. Notable mentions include the drone-like ending of track 5, entitled "Among the Trees", the 23 minute 7th track entitled "The
Fallen Kingdom", and the rest of the supportive album. Mournful material for any fan of decent doom metal.