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 Samael - Eternal [Century Media - 1999]You probably all know Samael from their fantastic albums "Passage" and "Ceremony of Opposites". Samael was one of these bands who always developed their style of music further but still remained brilliant with each release. Their music was always cold and aggressive. This last studio album, named "Eternal", was released back in 1999 and I was really disappointed at that time.Forget the coldness, forget the agressivity. It's almost completely gone now. This is really not the album I've expected.I thought their development to a "techno-metal" band was quite cool and I was sure that they would develop their style even further in the electronic direction on this album.
But what have they done instead?
They took the typical Samael parts from "Passage" mixed them with alternative rock and a bit of true-metal, made the guitars sound like a defective electric shaver and proved that Vorph is absolutely incapable to sing clean. His voice sounds as if he was gurgling with water while they recorded it and his bad accent is almost funny. A fact you could never notice when he was singing with his extreme voice in the past. The music is rather boring with too much echo and reverb. No development to more electronic sounds, just a much simpler structure and smooth hard rock songs with catchy melodic refrains.
The song "Together" for example, has a terrible, almost true-metal like refrain.
The lyrics got more insignificant on this release as if they don't know what they should sing about anymore.Sometimes there are parts where they remind me of the great past but still, these parts sound as if they were just copied from "Passage". I have read many good reviews about this album and I already wondered if my copy is defective or a wrong CD was accidently included, but sadly this is not the case.
2 years after the release of this album I still try to listen to it from time to time, to see if I might even like it after all. But as hard as I try, it's just not possible!I still think Samael is a great band and I hope they will surprise me with a great album again in the future, but their latest output is just an eternal disappointment for me.   Andreas Oelke
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|  | | Samael - Eternal | You probably all know Samael from their fantastic albums "Passage" and "Ceremony of Opposites". Samael was one of these bands who always developed their styl...
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| | | Hastings of Malawi - Deliriously ... | Formed in the early 1980s, after the member's sonic dabbling’s on the early Nurse With Wound records, Hastings Of Malawi took a decidedly busy and deta...
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