I have been a fan of The Vision Bleak for decades at this point. Their unique style of gothic metal inspired by the classic era of Universal horror films masterfully melds the usual overbearing cheese of the genre with an unusual crushing guitar tone. A notable death and doom metal influence served as the perfect counterpoint for the hammy bass voice of Kostanz, an extremity to reign in the cheese—compare this to his other project Ewigheim and you will notice how much a guitar tone can do. The Vision Bleak‘s last album, The Unknown, saw the band shift away from this stylistically. It was supposed to be a more personal affair, focusing on the musicians emotional inner space and with it came a shift in musical direction as well. Riffs played for very long times, consisting of small motifs that got repeated ad nauseam. While I admit that the album was well constructed (and reviews at the time reflect this), the new direction did little for me and it was frankly not what I wanted the band to do. This was not about dark castles, ghouls and a monologuing Vincent Price anymore. For this reason, I was very pleased when Weird Tales got announced, as the concept screamed classic horror and as the magazine this album is styled after has been an institution in shaping classic modernist horror and fantasy, very well deserving of such a treatment. The album attempts to function as one long song and mainly succeeds at that, even if the tracks themselves are still very distinguishable from each other.
Unfortunately, the album as a whole does not fare as well. While the band does make an attempt to return to more song driven forms and structure songs more around different, somewhat contrasting sections and while variety is present enough on the album, there is a lack of memorable sections and also heaviness that made the older material work. This might be partly due to the production, as the crushed soundscape rounds off a lot of the peaks of the guitar tone, removing crunch and attack, but the instrumental work is also severely lacking. The instruments rarely do much more than what they need, often just strumming and chugging chords without attempting to form a riff or similar and the synth layers on top similarly do much more than oscillate around simple motifs with few notes. All of this would be excusable if the vocal lines or general songwriting would be catchy or memorable, but this is at odds with the long form concept on one hand and on the other hand, the band is simply not committed enough to making the songs work in this way. This begs the question of what is better: An album that I am stylistically disinterested in, like The Unknown, that is good at what it does and committed to it, or an album whose stylistic direction I am into that doesn’t pull it off. This is a question I am not ready to answer, but what I can tell you is that this is not the glorious return to classic The Vision Bleak I was hoping for, either way.
