If they ever print bon mots of mine on t-Shirts, mugs and the like, one quote that will certainly not get unused is “The best way to make a black metal album is to not make a black metal album”. Ironically, this not so tongue-in-cheek critique of stylistic repackaging in black metal has left the reality of corpsepaint and trem a while ago and the phenomena of “it’s metal but as X” and “it’s something else entirely but we added growls” are as widespread as they have ever been. This leads to some admittedly rather philosophical problems for not only reviewers, but for some casual listeners as well. Allow me to enter the ivory tower for just a second: If a band were to just play dad rock a lá Dire Straits or Santana and the only metal connection was the growls for the most part, and the only connection to extreme metal at all was the cookie monster at the helm, can we even call it metal still? This is not really a question I can answer; even worse, it leads to more questions. I wouldn’t even consider listening to a throwback dad rock album, the justification being that I might as well spin Abraxas or Brothers in Arms again. But if it is packaged as metal, it becomes my duty. Are my ears perhaps not as worn down by classic rock as they have been by extreme metal in these last few years and might this lead to me overrating an album? Can we consider this way of writing a trick, to market it to a demographic more enfranchised with their subculture and more likely to actually check out new releases? All of these are considerations that make it quite hard to accurately rate Echoes of Light, Chapel of Disease‘s newest.
The situation gets complicated further by the fact that I actually know classic rock decently well and that, despite all that, I quite enjoy Echoes of Light. Compared to the album’s predecessor, there is a slight goth tinge to parts of the album, likely motivated by the goth inflected metal bands like Tribulation and Unto Others becoming more popular in the metal mainstream, but the band still sticks to their course for the most part. Songs are long-winded and clearly written around the guitar parts rather than simple song structures, choruses or the vocals. To a degree, this improves the album as the smooth lead guitars are the biggest selling point and as the vocals are bog standard anyway. The complete absence of strong vocal hooks makes me think that maybe the album could have just as well functioned as an instrumental, maybe even jam-inflected prog metal album. Or rock album, rather, as there is very little that demands the metal genre descriptor. Most songs will only have about a minute or two of actual metal riffing in it and the band seems too in love with long winding explorations of lead guitar to bother with them much. One can either view this as the band knowing what they’re good at and focusing on it or could decry it as an afterthought. The influence of a Mark Knopfler is strong here, whose long introductions and coda’s have always been a tad more impressive that the body of any Dire Straits song.
I am not one to assume malice here. Sometimes my instincts are too cynical and an initial thought of mine was that the album retained a thin veneer of metal to their classic rock sound just because marketing to an established scene is easier than marketing to those rock elders who have money but no intent to spend it on new bands. Still, despite all of its qualities, albums like these sometimes leave a sour taste in my mouth. If the only way metal can innovate is to stop being metal altogether, it will go the same way as mainstream rock—it will die. Chapel of Disease are not Imagine Dragons of course. Chapel of Disease aren’t selling out, but they are not innovating, either. Rather, they switched out which altar of musical worship their church is praying to. I might have heard less Knopfler worship than I have heard Schuldiner worship, but it is worship, nonetheless.
