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Avec Tristesse > How Innocence Dies > Reviews
Avec Tristesse - How Innocence Dies

Too silly and overdone to be depressing - 35%

The_Desolate_One, November 20th, 2011

Having heard the name of this band a few years ago, while being Brazilian myself and a die-hard fan of anything doomy as well, I felt compelled to support our national scene (not really famous for much other than thrash or power metal) and decided to check out this little album. I was in my teens back then and remember giving it a lot of spins. Unfortunately for me I don't think it stood too well the test of time.

First of all, yeah, about the genre... dark metal isn't the most clearly defined genre out there, but I guess here it stands for a mix of black metal alternating with some moments of slow melodic doom/death (Katatonia and Paradise Lost being the most obvious references here, though I think I do hear some My Dying Bride), and a little bit of some Opeth kind of prog too. I guess referring to it as dark metal is easier than as black/doom/death/prog. A quick listen to the first actual song, “All Love is Gone”, explains it better: a strong, fast black metal beginning followed by some doom/death that leads to an atmospheric break. Then there's a proggy build-up around the third minute, before another faster session culminating in blastbeats near the ending. It's actually a pretty good song and starts the album in a promising manner.

“A View of the End” starts promising too and features a structure opposite to that of “All Love is Gone”: a sweet doomy apocalyptic-sounding riff that switches to angrier black metal later, though it has clean vocals over the blastbeats and tremolo riffs. The bad part, and half the reason I gave it such a low score, is that these clean vocals are goofy as hell. While the BM vocals remind me of Forgotten Tomb, angry and desperate, the clean ones, however... I don't know who they remind me of, but they do make me think of someone who is trying too hard to sound emotional and just comes off as whiny and annoying. Every time I hear them, I have this mental image of some dude closing his eyes and leaning his head in a corny, awkwardly romantic way, while putting his hand over his heart. And the lyrics don't help either, but more on them below.

It's all downhill from here now, as songs will either feature interesting instrumentation ruined by the vocals, or will just be dragging bore-fests all the way through, often sounding like early Opeth at parts – by which I mean both that they emulate riffs from Morningrise and that they write nonsense structures just for the sake of having long songs. We can fit in the first category the songs “Escapism”, with the cool solo at 5:30 and sweet ending, and “Angel After Dark”, with its overall melancholy doom atmosphere (though a little too heavy on the synths) building up to explode angrily later and aim for a grandiose ending (that falls flat on its face due to... you know), while “Lost in Your Complexity”, “Of Emotions” and “As Years Pass By” fit the latter category, though I do give credit to “As Years Pass By” for picking up after the 5th minute mark and actually resembling something like a good song. “Of Emotions” is probably the worst offender here, having all of the above song-ruining elements and more: cheesy recitation. To be fair, you do have recitation in “All Love is Gone”, easily the best song in How Innocence Dies, but somehow it works there, as they borrowed the lyrics from Byron's poetry and it provides a break in a mostly fast track, while “Of Emotions” is already slow to begin with, and they're just reciting their own, awful, stuff.

The remaining songs, then, are fillers, all the 16 minutes of them, from some intro stuff, acoustic breaks and electronics to – no kidding – some weird French café shit. “Skeptical and Gone” is even worse as it gives you terrible blueballs, starting off good with a progression from cool atmosphere, acoustic guitar and keys to heavy doom/death riffing, only to abandon it all for a shitty story-telling gimmick, with the rest of the track being the noises of a guy (the persona of the lyrics) driving to his ex's house to kill himself in front of her (possibly her too, it's not clear) before the album ends with some gothic female-vocal-driven stuff. Terrible, terrible.

And that leads us to the whole concept of the album: it's all about a guy getting dumped and not coping well with it. Sure, great bands have written awesome songs about this theme, but a whole album is just too much. It gets really annoying by the 21st minute of it all, at about half of “Escapism”: “my tears mixed with her bloooood”. Fuck, that's cheesy. And then there's some wine-drinking here and there, and some darkness, and he even calls himself “a poor boy” at some part. That's when you stop being able to take this seriously anymore.

What we have here in the end, then, is one really good song, one song that has a good half, and then decent bits and pieces elsewhere, mixed with boring filler, terrible clean vocals and an overdone concept.

Dark Metal, Eh? - 65%

SnowVixen, June 16th, 2004

Well, with no prior information on this band other than that genre being named, I had no idea what I was getting into. However, downloads are free.

Well, whatever "dark metal" is supposed to mean, this is closer to the almost prog that's all the rage nowadays. As with Borknagar and Opeth, this isn't technical or musically profound enough to fall under actual "progressive" music, but it changes up more often than most other bands. Stradling the line between atmospheric doom and melodic black, though not slow enough for doom nor frantic enough for black, this band switches between the moderately rapid and the sort of slow stylings of both fairly predictably. The songs are pretty well written, with proper attention to song flow, and doesn't sound sloppy or inappropriate like many bands that try similar things.

The clean vocals are similar to Katatonia's, though the melodies at times remind me of Opeth or Borknagar. Black screams are almost dead on Catamenia. The interplay between the two and the harmonies are quite good, with neither really overpowering the other. Overall, the vocals are pretty pleasant.

Guitars go from clean acoustic through standard riffing/soloing to tremolo picking and back again with ease, with everything flowing fairly well. Bass and drums each get their moments to shine as well. None of these are really amazing on their own, but as a whole sound quite good. Of note, this album is too well produced. While clarity and crispness may theoretically be good, production like this makes the album sound kind of, for lack of a better term, weak.

The keyboards have their highs and lows. Some of the piano pieces are very pretty, and the synthesizers fairly fitting to the music, but this isn't a constant. Occasional use of the synths in place of wind instruments and various industrial sounding effects seriously distract from the rest of the music at times.

Musically, this band is pretty reminiscent of the various bands I've mentioned earlier. The slower more atmospheric parts bring to mind bands like Novembre, Katatonia, and Opeth... hardly the most difficult to listen to bands in their genre. The faster "black metal" moments summon images of Catamenia, Borknagar and Dimmu Borgir... again, easily digested bands.

The major issue with that I have with this album is that it's a little too digestable... a little too obviously attempting to sound like certain popular bands. As such, this band lacks both the ability to make a lasting impression and a sound of their own.

Though the album is pretty enjoyable for what it is, nothing about this really stands out and makes me want to run to the store to buy an Avec Tristesse hoodie. The band as a whole is pretty decent and, should they find their own sound, would probably do quite well for themselves. Until then, they're nothing special.