TWENTY years on from their evocative and doom-ridden debut, The Eternal roll out another epic album of Goth atmosphere and melancholy metal.
Skinwalker sprawls across 65 minutes, blending the heavier direction of the last album and early releases with the more Goth rock direction in between, highlighting all the nuances of their style.
The addition of Dreadnaught guitarist Richie Poate seems to have aligned with the band’s reawakening of its heavier side, and now with Amorphis members both current and former filling the bass and drum roles, those aspects are in full bloom.
The proof of this is immediately apparent in the enormous and majestic “Abandoned By Hope” where The Eternal work in every trick they have at their disposal, from immense chugging doom riffs to quieter pensive passages and glorious emotive guitar solos. Amorphis vocalist Timo Joutsen makes the first of his appearances here, bringing in his commanding death roar at timely points. The way he chimes in alongside Mark Kelson’s plaintive crooning adds a further level of menace to this darkly emotional track. “Deathlike Silence” plays to the other side of their personality, Gothic rock mode with a catchy, hummable chorus; “Under the Black” and “When the Fire Dies” revisit Kelson’s earlier fascinations with post-1998 Katatonia, with an extra dimension from layers of post-metal darkness and ambience.
All the these elements are, once more, given their fullest expression in the album’s longer songs. “The Iconoclast” and “Shattered Remains” are dramatic and nearly theatrical in their grandiosity, Joutsen’s vocals a crushing and stark contrast to Kelson’s, almost fragile in comparison even as it weaves from a deeper baritone to a clear higher register. Doom riffs come crashing down around far more delicate moments and the icy ambience makes The Eternal’s melancholy that much more desolate, their beautiful vision of woe more abject.
At more than an hour, Skinwalker might stretch the patience of even some of the most dedicated fans of Gothic misery, but the journey is worth it.
