THE UMBERSUN

Ugh, seriously? The melodic underpinnings of their quasi-orchestral sound were what made the better moments of the previous few Elend albums work to the extent that they did, so the extent to which they are played down here in favour of ambient orchestral groaning is disheartening. The idea of orchestral-ambient darkwave isn't a terrible one, but the execution here is a bit of a disaster.

Ambient music does tend to sound a bit samey, granted, but the trick to writing a good ambient track is making it sound intentionally so, and to somehow grasp the secret of making it nonetheless feel satisfying in its own right: when your composition ends up sounding like the extended intro to a song which never actually quite manages to get started, you know that you've made a pretty serious misstep, and that's exactly how Elend come across here.

To make things even worse, the death growls and shouted vocals are even more incongruous and risible here.