PANDEMONIUM : WHISPERS
Unsigned
Sweden’s Pandemonium have long since been admired for their blend of death, doom and black metal, with which they ably bring together melody, aggression, beauty, atmosphere and ferocious brutality. Previous full-lengths “Insomnia” and “The Autumn Enigma” garnered them a host of fans who hopefully won’t have missed the memo about “Whispers”, the band’s latest effort; this album brings forward everything that was good about Pandemonium’s sound before and then goes about three steps further, resulting in a confident, unique release that both rewards and demands repeated listens.
The key description needed here is ‘symphonic’. The sound on “Whispers” is absolutely huge, and bolstered by an impressive, clear production. The keyboards carry a remarkable amount of weight, partly a filmic score to the action and adventure of the guitars, but partly just an enormous song component in their own right. That’s not to say they’re overwhelming or plastic; for example, the introduction of “Organic Pain Collector”, which mixes a bold atmosphere with the subtler ingredient of clean piano is very beautiful and purposeful. Rather you just can’t escape the keys; they are dramatic, technical and vital to Pandemonium’s sound. That this works so well in what is otherwise doomy melodic death metal is a testament to the band’s creativity and talent.
“Behold the Firestorm” is an early attention-grabber, with a good dose of pace and a lot of the melody carried in the powerful, crunching guitars. There’s so much confidence, so much poise in this music that it’s impossible to resist. While this track comes off like the love child of Dark Tranquillity and Dimmu Borgir, “Whispers of the Damned” and “Let Chaos Come” let a certain doom flavour through, evoking classic English doom-death acts and lending a fullness and thoughtful melancholy to the album. Although there are very few real breaks, and no instrumentals, which can cause a bit of symphony-fatigue, “Whispers” is a varied album, with each track possessed of its own distinct character. Much of this comes from the versatile vocal performance, whereby low growls, harsh shouts and higher, more twisted screams come together with spoken word passages, and add easy accessibility to these long tracks.
That Pandemonium offered this up for free download is staggering; this is the kind of album that should have been bothering end of year polls. If you’ve never heard these creative Swedes before, I implore you to try them out; this is so professional, so poised and so full of emotive and melodic power that I have every confidence fans of the styles outlined above will be overjoyed with it. An incredibly strong release.
91/100
