Review from Forgotten Path Magazine

Posted by Nick Skog on Monday, June 17, 2013 Under: Album Reviews
From: Forgotten Path Magazine; Issue 5 
Published: November 2013
Magazine Website

It seems that the debut album of Silent Path tries to continue the traditions, which have been started by “Filosofem” of Burzum and it is typical to the underground Black Metal of the Middle East (for instance, we can remember Animus or Avinar and so on). We hear the music here, which is being performed in a very slow and repetitive way, having almost whispering vocals because of pain and despair. Something that we could call Metal is heard just sometimes, often in climatic places and most of the sounds remind us of Ambient more than Metal, I mean those guitars and interludes of nature. Indeed, if we call Ambient/Black Metal such bands as Paysage d’Hiver, then this music should be called as Ambient with some poor Black Metal nuances. The situation is very similar to mentioned Burzum’s work.
The music distinguishes itself with quite huge mesmerism though it is strongly monotonous and sometimes even pisses me off. If the most of Atmospheric/Black Metal bands can’t create a particular mood, which wouldn’t be chopped off by heavy riffs and would affect the listener by fragments, then here everything is vice versa - almost every song extends over primitively and this is the way how an ongoing image of a desperate melancholic human is being maintained. Of course there are some songs which are not really lengthy, but that musical thread makes the CD very predictable; after listening to the first song you already know what is going to be next. But it is not a disadvantage in any way. Exactly that genuine frustration is so rare in such music nowadays and often it follows behind the miscellaneous sophisticated variations and techniques and in this case it is expressed in such a simple and continuous way that I even have nothing to add on. From the very beginning a desire to talk about exaggerated simplicity and lack of originality completely disappears in the second part, when you dive into Zen and plainly repetitive consonances of sounds. In the end, it’s quite a good CD for the listeners of such bands as Death Aura, Xasthur, Austere, Lyrinx or Elysian Blaze. 

Rating: 7.5/10
Reviewed by: Bloodie

In : Album Reviews 


Tags: silent path mourner portraits ekove efrits inner path saman nu atmospheric funeral doom black metal depressive 

SILENT PATH - MOURNER PORTRAITS 

Released: July 21, 2012
500 Copies
Depressive Black Metal/Funeral Doom