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Raven Black Night > Choose the Dark > Reviews
Raven Black Night - Choose the Dark

Almost a Hit - 75%

Vega360, April 29th, 2007

When you find a particular bands sound enjoyable you usually want to find of more the same style. I went looking for more epic doom bands (in massive vein of Solitude Aeturnus) and I dug out this band from the doom metal underground. Hailing from Australia, Raven Black Night play sort in style forged in a cauldron with elements from just about every popular doom metal band past and present. The majority of their influence is Candlemass (the Messiah Marcolin era to be more specific), as well as Cirith Ungol. They also have take elements from Black Sabbath and My Dying Bride as well.

They go both directions with the vocals on this album, some tracks are epic death/doom, while some tracks are more of an epic heavy/doom approach. In theory, this sounds like it could please everybody. However, each vocalist has there flaws.

Their clean vocalist (“The White Knight”) obviously worships the fat man in the monk robe, however, Messiah he is not. Messiah was such an important part of the trademark Candlemass sound because of his deep baritone voice, but “The White Night” was not blessed with such a gift, so his voice sounds higher pitched, which during fast tempo songs fits in nicely. However, when everything slows down to more doomish tempos his voice become a real annoyance.

Their death metal vocalist (creatively dubbed “The Black Knight”) has his own flaws but they are not as distracting as “The White Knights”. Vocally this guy gets the mood right majority of the time, and his influences are more underground doom bands (he reminds a lot of Greg Chandler from Esoteric.) However, his growls vary every now and then, straying into black metal territory, and other times going into the style of vocals that are just deemed as “Harsh”, which are alright, but don’t set the same atmosphere for me as songs by My Dying Bride and the like.

The guitars vary with the music. The riffs range from the obvious Candlemass worship to some traditional doom riffs once in a while so we get a nice mix. The instrumental track simply named “Guitar Solo” (the name is a pillar in the pantheon of song title creativity) doesn’t do much for me; it’s pretty bland and doesn’t lack the punch a solo should.

The bass work is pretty good. The instrumental track “Swamped” (not named “Bass Solo” as the archive entry suggests) is on of the higher points on the album, showing how he can vary from the Candlemass bass lines into some different stuff.

The drums are under produced, doesn’t get much simpler than that. Not often enough did I hear any drum work through the guitars and vocals. The stuff I was able to pick out didn’t stick around in my head long enough to be remembered either.

The song placement on the album follows the melting pot theory; they tack elements from a lot of popular doom bands. The fourth tack is there answer to such tracks as “Planet Caravan”, the mellower tracks that show up once per Sabbath's major four albums. They have the My Dying Bride epic track coming in as number seven on here. The rest seem to jump someplace between Cirith Ungol worship and the Candlemass obsession.

Overall, I think this band has some potential. However, this album tries to pay tribute to several doom influences that all have there own distinct sounds, such styles that when mixed make the album jump around to much to follow cleanly. The effort is clearly there, however, the organization is lacking. This release is like a big soup made from leftovers, some of this type, some of that type, but not enough of any to satisfy one’s hunger.