Entry 382 - Barren Earth - Curse of the Red River

 

I have no idea the first time I heard these guys. I know at some point I heard one of their albums and was blown away by how cool it sounded and then completely forgot about them. A few years ago I saw that they released a new album and decided to check it out. It was not nearly as good as what I remembered.

I went through their back catalog to try to find the album that I thought was so dope and came across their debut. While it's not as good as I remember this is still a solid slab of melodic death metal with just a hint of progressive and doom thrown in for good measure.

The core of Barren Earth's sound is rooted in melodic riffing, alternating clean and harsh vocals, and mid to semi-fast pacing throughout the album. What makes the album interesting is how all these elements interact. The guitars have an excellent contrast to each other, one playing a solid rhythm throughout and a lead playing melodies on top. Keyboards are blanketed on top to add to the already solid array of music on the album, creating a wall of sound effect.

While all of that is decent in its own right, the album starts to differentiate itself from the melodeath field by its interplay of vocal styles. The growls in particular are exceptionally brutal for melodic death metal, these are much more in line with deep growls found within standard death metal... not the higher ones normally found within the genre.

When I looked into why the vocals were so well executed I found out the they were performed by none other than Mikko Kotamäki from Swallow the Sun. That explains a whole lot as in his earlier days he had one of the better growls out of Finland.

Barren Earth would not be able to maintain the high standards set by their debut album on follow up releases, but for this one release in particular they put out an extremely solid slice of melodic death metal.