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Callenish Circle > Forbidden Empathy > Reviews
Callenish Circle - Forbidden Empathy

Forbidden Empathy review - 60%

Rafal, January 25th, 2005

Before I teared apart and played the promo that Rance sent me in I had no idea what I would deal with. Actually, I knew that Callenish Circle had been around for some time, but I never even had a stab at checking them out, really. My ignorace surely came out of read reviews in Polish magazines which didn't speak highly of them, rating Callenish Circle among other boring melodic bands. Now I'm laughing at it since my very first contact with Dutch metallers wasn't all that bad and convinced me not to believe poor reviewers anymore.

"Forbidden Empathy" is a sort of compilation that contains early recordings: "Loverlorn"(demo'95), "Drift of Empathy" (debut album '96), "Escape" (EP), "Graceful... Yet Forbidden" (2nd album '98) and one song from ""And the Ravens Left the Tower" sampler. Overall: 29 songs closed in 2 hours 24 minutes and 41 seconds.

Callenish Circle play a formal melodic doom/death metal with screams and low-grunts which I have never been a huge fan of. Sure, this is a nice listen with frenzy moments, but calling it "essential piece of sound" (as stated in promotional note), is a bit over the top. I find myslef enjoying it only after a hard day of school/work when all muscles refuse to obey and the only thing I dream of is to lay on couch and do completly nothing at all. Then Callenish Cirlce floats through one ear and floats out the other leaving mind in the same state as in the beginning. Sometimes is they get brutal as in "Forgotten" or "No Reason", sometimes female vocals take a part in the game and make a track a bit atmospheric ("Broken") but all in all everything is mid-paced and catchy the whole time. Death metal after one fashion gets boring very fast so it's impossible to stick it out. CC could have been a real blast-off if they had had more up-tempo elements in the songs in order to make a varied shit. I quite liked the band but if you woke me up at night and asked me to hum a single riff I would, aside from showing you the middle finger, not carry out your request.

My personal experience with the band is just this album, I have not heard the last efforts, so I can't compare anything. If you want to see here a recommendation whether this is worth buying for a fan of "Flesh Power Dominion" or not - better check out other reviews, I had no fuckin' clue. Albeit, if you have yet to check a decent melodic death metal band for a long winter nights you should lay your hands on this album just to see/hear how early Callenish Cirlce tasted like.

Written for GlobalDomination (www.globaldomination.se)