It is tough to hide in genres like pop, heavy metal and yes, melodic death metal. These genres rely on catching on to compelling patterns, choruses etc, that hone in on rousing emotion and sticks in the mind. As such, a balance has to be struck between accessibility and creativity, a task that bands like The Black Dahlia Murder and Insomnium regularly hit with good results. Eternal Storm tried stretching their melodic death metal sound on their debut, Come the Tide in 2019, to mixed results. The album presented a conflicted style where long song lengths interfered with the delicate genre requirements. Nevertheless, the band was skilled and showed an apt hand at hooks, if a bit overwrought in cheesy melodrama. Come 2024, A Giant Bound to Fall arrives, making an impression by extending Come the Tide‘s already lengthy 59 minutes into 70 minutes. This Gator was instantly apprehensive, but curious to see if Eternal Storm have improved their writing. Starting out with the aptly named “An Abyss of Unreason”, the band puts its longest foot forward with an almost 14 minute long track.
This opening track at once showcases the same strengths and weaknesses that permeated Come the Tide a few years back. This band is pretty good at Opeth-like dynamic transitions and in their heaviest moments feature a drum attack that provide great contrast (slightly softened by the production). The At the Gates guitar-leads are always busily cutting and grooving while the song itself builds in an aimless fashion, before slowing in anticipation of the climax. There is a post rock sense to the song constructions that feels at odds with the nature of melodic death metal, an issue that permeates both of Eternal Storm‘s albums and other bands that have attempted this like Be’lakor. Trying to make a case for the band, “A Dim Illusion” and “The Sleepers” are two songs that have strong melodic themes. The latter in particular comes close to sounding like Disillusion and In Vain when they are at their best and makes good use of its more subdued moments with a marching drum beat and floating guitar noodling. When the clean vocal refrain arrives at the half point and builds towards its payoff moment, the impact is strong and feels earned.
I wish I could say the same for the rest of A Giant Bound to Fall but the album makes it too easy to lose the thread while it builds to the same aimless formula. The most clear demonstration of this is “Last Refuge”, starting out as a raging build up with creative vocal hooks and transitions only to proceed into five minutes of a set drum pattern and riffs that lead nowhere. There is a lot of individual skill and creative ideas involved in this band. But while it’s important to give songs room to breathe and explore when writing progressive music, the editing phase is all the more important. If you don’t have a good album arc over 70 minutes of material your album should not be 70 minutes. People who loved the debut will probably like this album too, but as long as Eternal Storm remain terrible at editing their work, I remain unable to get enthusiastic about their music.
