supraliminal's Full Review: Perpetual Desolation by The Sins Of Thy Beloved
I purchased this album about three months ago, and this is the first taste of Sins Of Thy Beloved I've yet to experience. Sins.... have a sound much like early Theater of Tragedy, only the pace is on average faster.... gothic, melancholy metal with both male growling (sounds closer to a black snarl than death growl) and beautiful (non-operatic) female vocals courtesy of... of... damn, I can't find that inlay. Anyway, this female vocalist doesn't have the natural pretty vocals of the angelic sounding Liv Kristine (Theater of Tragedy), but she does seem to know how to do a better job of singing in the context of a song vice beautifully crooning to some music just going on in the background.
In any case, every song is replete with keyboards, backing chants/choruses, and a lot of haunting violin accentuating desperate songs of scorned love, betrayal, lust, and so forth. Fear not those wary of comparisons to TOT, for Sins of thy Beloved has plenty of heaviness and those mandatory double bass drums in addition to the formulaic doomy chugging during slower parts. They are not however as heavy as some of the earlier Nightwish albums. The only problem I have with this album is that, while every song is good, you could play this album in any order and I would never notice.... no songs really jump out at me as highlights, which is good in that there are also no real low points, but bad because there's no song on here that keeps me coming back for more, and for that reason this cd has never dominated my stereo system. Actually, I guess the final track does, a cover of Metallica's The Thing That Should Not Be, but even that is about at the same level as the other songs, the only reason it stands out is as a new angle on a song that I already knew was great. I guess I am also a little disappointed at a complete lack of haunting guitar solos (ever occurred to anyone what that could add to this kind of music?). Another problem common to this type of music is the male vocals are decent, but is there any band like this that has a completely blood curdling growling counterpart to the beautiful female vocals? I've never found any, and I didn't with this release either. Other than that, this is a pretty satysfying release that will quench the thirst of those who (like myself) enjoy bands such as Theater of Tragedy, Nightwish, and even Therion and The Gathering or Lacuna Coil.
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