Metal Reviews

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Good review Al, but your last words and overall feeling from the review makes you wonder why you scored it so high...for an average album that is. For me this album is somewhere between 65 and 70. I liked it much more than the band first albums, which were slow and doomy. I also like the vocals on Pitch Black Effects. I can't compare this to My Passion/Your Pain since i've yet to listen to it.
Those spoken words on Schwarzes Licht indeed takes a lot of the energy of the songs but it's not all that bad. I think the use of synths is a good improvement. The songs i liked most are This Day You Regret, Ignorant and Sweet Cyanide and Schwarzes Licht. If only the second half of the album was as good as the first this album could have been so much more.

I gave it a 68 as a relative value to the score system we use on this site, A score system I feel needs a bit of rejigging (a debate for another thread) 60 -69 we have rated as 'fair' which I felt the album was as I did enjoy many parts of it. That didn't stop it being average overall however. I did feel that rating it lower would make it look worse than it really was, but re-reading the review a lower 60's score may have been more applicable.
Sweet Cyanide is a good track, slightly preferred their speedier stuff though. Possibly a side effect of being a bit of a thrashphiliac (My term, steal it and I sue! )

Yeah, the rating system here does allow for a more liberal interpretation. After all each person has it's own ways of scoring albums so they transform the existing system here to their needs. My feelings on this album is that it is a fair one, so I have no problem with your score.

And don't worry about that "thrashphiliac" thing. How can I use it if I don't understand it's meaning.

I have to admit that when i got this promo, i was rifling through a stack of promos i had just recieved, and was in the car having a conversation at the same time while [pitch.black.effects] was playing in the background. When paying faint attention to the album it sounded quite kick ass, but after a real listen, my opinion is pretty much that of Al's. It sounds as if this album had alot of potential, but it just seems to be missing a little something that would make a big difference... kinda like homemade tomato sauce i guess. The way Sweet Cyinide kicks off is abolutely thrashin' though, and stays pretty soild the whole way through... a par album nontheless

i truly beg to differ on this one.

i've bought the album three or four weeks ago and, after numerous spins, i think it's a great achievement for Callenish Circle.

they managed to increase the overall electronic feeling of My passion/your pain without making the same mistake in flames did (the guitars riffs didn't suffer too much from the increase of keyboard parts unlink Soundtrack to your escape).

the tempo slowdown on most tracks made them more easily memorized, which may help new listeners to get on the callenish ship...

there's no filler track (at least, in my humble opinion) on this album which i would have rated much higher than you did.

a good callenish release and an excellent melodeath album (but not as surprising as "the absence" and "pain confessor"'s first releases.)

The little I've heard, sounds like In Flames - Touch Of Red, only better. Which isn't saying much. Another crappy melodeath album...