Draconian - Arcane Rain Fell
It is hard, at least for me, to find a genuinely good Goth/Doom album, since many bands in this particular subgenre seem satisfied in ripping off "The Peaceville Three" forever (and not doing a very good job at it, I might add). However, bands like early Theatre of Tragedy were able to go beyond the original sound set by these pioneers and release great gems before falling into oblivion (read: worthless techno, in ToT's case).
Let us acknowledge this isn't a particularly easy subgenre to write good music on, since it has a tendency of becoming stale quite fast, so it requires a healthy dose of talent and songwriting skill to create such long and dragging songs in a way that they come off exciting and moody instead of boring. Draconian is a band that undoubtedly has such skills.
I don't know if this is a concept album, but each song in here seems to tell a story in its own particular haunting way, and the lyrics are exactly one of the elements that can be compared to early ToT, though I consider them slightly more compelling here.
Production is pretty good, with the rhythm guitars packing a powerful crunch and the leads possessing a smooth, fluidic presence (and tone) that goes pretty well with the gorgeous melodies played. Keyboards are frequently used, yet never sound overbearing and you’ll notice how greatly the atmosphere is enhanced by their presence, especially when piano parts are used, like in ‘Heaven laid in Tears’ and a great solo near the end of ‘Death, Come near Me’, where it blends seamlessly into the beautiful vocal melodies, ending the album in a way that can only be described as masterful.
Drums and bass are nothing special, unfortunately, but they don’t fail. Sometimes we get a nice dose of double bass here and there, but that’s all.
As one can expect from this genre, the vocals are relatively diverse. We have a talented female singer whose voice tends to sound like an angel’s, and we have the male, growling singer. Nothing new, but I can say both are very good. Sometimes the male singer goes into a well done black metal rasp and some spoken dialogue, which I usually dislike since it sounds like he is unable to carry a normal, sung melody and instead resorts to talking when feeling tired of grunting. It’s distracting, but not bad per se (especially here).
This is one of those albums you’d better listen to at evening while watching the rain or something like it. If you don’t feel like dozing off on Filosofem, that is. Absolutely essential and entrancing Goth/Doom album.
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