Many a reviewer will tell you that music PR is good mainly for laughs or danger warnings, but I frequently find it a useful guide to a band’s intentions that helps me form an opinion. Aitheer, a Finnish progressive metal band making their full-length debut with The Serpent, are a useful example of that. You see, where most PR releases cite influential and benchmark bands, Aitheer‘s mentions none and instead throws around words like cinematic and theatric.
And just like that, I have a way to frame The Serpent.
The bedrock of Aitheer‘s sound is a melodic, rocky form of progressive death metal. Now, I’m a big fan of that flavor of metal. I also love many forms of music that strive to create drama and story. There is however a problem in that I don’t regard the former as a great tool for accomplishing the latter. I find that type of metal works better as hooky, in the moment music. Aitheer venture in that direction occasionally, particularly when the keyboards add a bombastic accent to the riffs on the title track and the middle section of “The Dance of Twins”, but most of The Serpent is too patient for me. It also frequently digresses into interludes and quiet sections. I am an avowed metal interlude lover and they have good ones in the form of the MENA-influenced “East” and the classical guitar of Flame but here, they fade into the rest of The Serpent. In doing so, they help make the whole feel somewhat directionless, which is one of the last words I want to use for music aiming at a cinematic feeling.
I wish I could be more positive about Aitheer as I enjoyed a lot of the music on The Serpent, but it’s very tough to see past the failure to hit its own ambitions and the way the whole is less than the sum of the parts. I like Aitheer‘s ideas but the execution makes for an uneven listening experience, and The Serpent doesn’t wriggle free from the pack as a consequence. Here’s hoping that come the next act of Aitheer‘s story, our heroes have learned from their past experiences.
