Album Review: Cemetery Skyline - Nordic Gothic

I think I made it clear when Creeper released their last album that I have never been a fan of goth. In fact, I harangued that album for so blatantly aping goth rock without seeming to understand the ethos at all. Goth is more than sounding cold and croaking a baritone vocal, but that is often what we are given when someone tries to revitalize the scene in a more mainstream way. Creeper failed at it spectacularly, but perhaps a group of people from the icy world of Nordic metal will have better luck.

They do, and I'm not going to waste any time getting to that point. These veterans may not play goth as obvious as some other imitators, but they have been around long enough to know when a good song is a good song, ad they deliver plenty of those. The mood is dark, and rather cold, but the choruses have the semi-uplifting tone to be a black velvet blanket we use as a vampire cape. It's smooth, and soft, and damn comfortable.

The key to all of this is Mikael Stanne, whose baritone crooning has the requisite dark feelings we expect, but who can also give the choruses the scope they require, and perhaps even a bit of tenderness. That gets juxtaposed with the music, which is more metallic than perhaps I would expect from a goth record. Their roots shine through, as the synths play their usual part, but do so atop muscular guitar chords. The result is a sound that feels both musically and emotionally heavy, which is far more striking than a more image-focused approach.

As the record unfolds, we are struck by the proposition that the darkness is merely the space where light has been blocked. Often, that has been done by our own hands, because we don't want to see the truth more clearly illuminated. In the musical sense, that means this much might be trying to be icy and goth, but ice shines quite brightly when light hits it at the right angle. That is how this record comes across, as the melodies of songs like "Never Look Back" are sweet and enveloping.

There's a shared ethos between this record and Katatonia's approach, where beauty and darkness are entwined together to create a lush expression of the human condition. Cemetery Skyline is on the brighter end of that spectrum, but the similarities between this record and "Sky Void Of Stars" are quite strong. It isn't easy to make something beautiful out of the sadder side of our emotions, and bands that are able to do so should be commended.

The only misstep on the record is the closing "Alone Together", which stretches on for nearly eight minutes. That running time means the song is the slowest on the album, and without the energy of the rest, it feels like a drag in comparison. That's a shame, because it leaves a slightly sour aftertaste for what was a perfectly balanced record up to that point. I assume they were trying to end on a more epic note, but the extra time and space doesn't turn into a bigger sound or a bigger hook, which means it hits the cliches of slow music so many metal fans have always had.

Don't let that dissuade you, though. The rest of the album is a wonderful blend of slick and sad, giving us songs that remind us that in the zombie apocalypse, the half-brained becomes a treasured commodity. There's almost always an upside, even if we can't see it. With this record, we can at least hear it.