OUR TWILIGHT

Barren Earth is as close to a super group as Finnish metal has ever seen, gathering together musicians from such respected groups as Amorphis, Swallow the Sun, Moonsorrow, Rytmihäiriö and Kreator. While super groups are often seen as big ego, big buck cash-ins, there's no sign of that here, perhaps because with this kind of music big bucks never enter the picture.

Our Twilight is the group's debut EP, released in 2009 by Peaceville Records, and it succesfully shows at least part of the essence of the band on its four tracks. Knowing the members' previous bands it's no suprise that the big picture is very much epic death metal, complete with some clean vocals, very prominent piano and even some good old fashioned keyboard soli. The heaviness is heavy, the melodies are bold, the vocals are cold and the couple of guitar soli thrown in are pretty damn great.

Compared to the full lenght released in early 2010 these songs are much more straightforward metal with very few actually light sections. This is a very good introductory release giving a taste of what's to come, but on the actual album they would expand their dynamic range to a great effect.

(Originally written for MetalMusicArchives)