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Gracefallen is the new band of the
former Ancient Rites keyboard player Domingo Smets. In this new
band he plays the guitars and wrote the beautiful orchestral
arrangements. Ancient Rites wasn’t is first band by the way, in
former years he was a member of groups like Agathocles and
Renaissance. But a few years on the road with Ancient Rites brought
him a lot of experience on the European stages. The idea of
starting a solo project was changed into looking for lads to found a
new band. It is striking that two of these musicians were Axamenta
musicians in the past. That’s another dark metal band who released
their first album quiet recently. Kristof De Greef, originally
chosen as guitar player, became the man of the grunts and just
before recording a drummer was found : Frederik. You wouldn’t
expect it if you look at this line up, but Gracefallen music is full
of keyboards, bringing more depth and a gracious feeling.
‘Lord
of Gale’ was recorded in September 2002 at the Midas Studio
(Lokeren) and sounds well alright. In February 2003 the recordings
were completed and Gracefallen is now looking for a label to expand
their possibilities. It starts with an intro in pure baroque style,
evocating memories of Empyrium’s sound. ‘Release me’ explodes into
a fine bunch of metal riffs, all smoothly covered by those
voluminous keyboard parts. The angelic voice of Caroline is the
centre of the compositions, always echoed by the dainty grunts of
singer Kristof, he’s the one who wrote all the tracks together with
Domingo. Both vocals show us a nice contrast in every track. Just
listen to the mysterious charisma of some spoken words in a track
called ‘Nightfall’. It all fits very well in a smooth musical way,
even the rough breaks being the backbone of ‘Moonlight hymn’. I
would say that female singer Caroline still has to win some
self-confidence in her way of singing sometimes, but that’s only a
small point of critic. This is a band to keep an eye on : excellent
gothic metal eager to please every adept of the genre. |
