’Katatonia meets Paradise Lost’ is the quickest and easiest way to sum Autumnblaze up here, on their fifth album. The melancholy riffs, the Rock beats, Eldron’s harsh yet pained growl... it all adds up to a formula that you’ve most likely heard before, opener Wir Sind Was Sir Wind alone almost putting me off the album due to its sheer familiarity. Yet following track Who Are You tones down the music considerably, concentrating on the mixture of clean and harsh vocals, and the album starts to prove its value bit by bit. The amount of influences is wider than at first may appear, especially the Black Metal influence that pops its head up on the superbly-titled I Had To Burn This Fucking Kingdom (complete with Funeral Doom breakdown) and Brudermord. Little moments like the keyboard interlude on the latter are almost perfect, contrasting awesomely with the harshness, yet are far too short and seldom to really have the best effect.

Perdition Diaries keeps throwing surprises at you, keeps you on your feet. The near-ambient Empty House seems more like something you’d find on an obscure Bowie album than here, yet here it is, and an effective song it is, breaking the pace nicely before the more typical Neugeburt comes along to do its catchy thing. Piano gets introduced on Ways, a rather nice ballad, but by this time in the album’s running you’re prepared for pretty much anything, and sadly for the band the various songs don’t work together well as an album. It feels more like a split between two bands with the tracks mixed up, and results in an uneven listen that’s hard to become engrossed in due to the massive changes in style that Autumnblaze throw at you. The sad truth is that as catchy as moments like the riffing in Saviour is, it’s let down by the album overall, and unless you enjoy listening to compilations then there’s little reason to recommend Perdition Diaries over the bands that it takes influence from. I like that the band are willing to experiment and mix in different things, but unless those various elements sit well next to each other it’s a failed experiment.