AGE OF SILENCE

'Meh'.

I bought this CD in a shop in Germany for 50 cents or something equally daft. I'd never heard of Age of Silence (and apparently, neither had anyone else, since they were in the literal bargain bin), but it was a metal CD, so why not?

Labelled as avant-garde metal... whatever the hell that means... this sounds a lot like something Devin Townsend would do, complete with obscure, gloomy cover art and unusual song titles. Age of Silence have a big sound, with multiple-layered guitars overproduced to give each of the three tracks a huge feeling about them. But otherwise, these songs are fairly dull. The overbearing 'big' guitar chords are heard through each track, leaving me feel like there's been an ongoing chord played throughout the entire EP.

But it doesn't stop there. It starts to overshadow the vocals, any lead parts, the drums... the whole lot. I don't 'get' this kind of music. I understand it's based more on ambience and what-have-you, but for the most part this is just pretty boring and repetitive. There's one or two moments where something might sound catchy or interesting, but as a whole, considering this is only a three-song EP, it's not really anything I'd come back to.

The shop I'd bought it from was probably relieved to be rid of it.

'Acceleration' - Age Of Silence (8/10)

Age Of Silence came together as a fusion from members of Mayhem, Arcturus, Solefald, and so on. In other words, this is something of a supergroup between the more adventurous bands in the Norwegian black metal scene. At once, this may excite fans of those bands, perhaps wanting to hear some sort of 'ultimate' black metal album. On the contrary, many of the overt black metal sounds have been filtered out, and instead, these musicians try their hand at a very strange and keyboard-heavy take on avant-garde metal. It takes some getting used to, but 'Acceleration' is a successful departure from these musicians' black metal roots.

With a sound somewhat similar to that of fellow avant-metallers Solefald, Age Of Silence is an elaborate mish-mash of styles, rolled into one distinctive sound. The symphonic keyboards of band leader Andy Winter give a gothic vibe to the music, and he brings some eerie classical piano to the table on top of that. Age of Silence is decidedly not a black metal band, but the guitars here aren't too dissimilar from Emperor, or Ihsahn's solo work. The most distinctive element of Age Of Silence's music are the vocals, offered here by Lars Nedland. His voice is very melodic, and there is no ego in his delivery; while a more traditional metal or rock singer would have put inflections in the performance or at least something to prove that they are a great or fantastic singer, Nedland's performance sticks to the words on paper and draws within the lines, almost uncomfortably so. In truth, his vocals here are wonderful, with great vibrato and some complicated vocal harmonies running throughout the album. It does sound like he is singing with a gun to his back however, and not all listeners are going to like that.

The lyrics are at-times puzzling, but there is a very concrete theme that runs through the album. As is reflected in the artwork, 'Acceleration' is a largely nihilistic perspective of modern life, its fast-paced workings, and the general sense that humans are becoming more like machines, and less like real people. The song titles do offer this concept up a bit too readily, but the lyrics tackle it well enough, throwing in a dash of surrealism to satisfy the avant-fans. The production is often cold and disparate, but it works well like that. Besides a warm respite with the acoustic 'I No Longer Know If I Am Mad', the music relies on cold, gloomy guitars, incredibly varied keyboards, and many other surprises- like electronic beats- that sometimes only ever appear once throughout the entire album. This is an eerie and strange album, and won't fail to alienate plenty of the fans of the bands for which these musicians are otherwise best known for. It is pretty jarring at first to hear avant-garde metal with such melodic vocals, but underneath the aloof impression I first got from 'Acceleration', there is something oddly beautiful here.

Age of Silence is a norwegian band with one album in their pocket released in 2004 named Acceleration. Formed with members from black metal bands like Mayhem, Khold, Solefald, Borknagar and Arcturus, Age of silence doesn't sound at all like these bands. This album is avant garde metal with progressive metal leanings. As a whole this album is ok, the instrumental passages alternates from excellent to really monotonous momets but always even is thos mediocre momets the bands sound tight and intristing. If the musicianship is very good, sometimes the voice of Lars Nedland is a little same on every piece, I mean he has no varation on his voice, and is a linear most of the time. To come wiith more diverse arrangements here and there are some growling to give a certain atmospher to a piece or another, but it fails to be something special. I said that the music is good with some very good moments, shifting from pure prog metal to some blistering avante gard moments of the highest calibre but always combined with great keyboards offerd by Andy Winter from Winds and Subterranean Masquerade. Check out Acceleration, the very instristing piece The Green Office and The Dark Desk Drawer and 90° Angels are the best tracks from here, the rest are ok but to linear and monotonous sin places. Overall an intrsting album, definetly must be checked if you are a fan of prog metal with unusual avant garde moments, but not an outstanding album in my opinion, must've bean a lot more great if they use more extreme metal moments. I will give 3 stars, fans of Wind, Ved Buens Ende might find this release intristing enough to give some spins. Good album but fails realy to impress me as a whole.

Considering the abysmal effort of the band on its one and only album, Acceleration, I wasn't hoping for much from the follow up EP, Complications: Trilogy of Intricacy, and was expecting even less. So you can imagine my surprise on playing this EP and finding 3 songs of fairly high quality, certainly far ahead of where the ban had been only a year before hand.

The one real strength of the bands first album, Andy Winters excellent keyboard playing, remains intact for this album but the major areas of my discontent have been addressed. Namely, production is now top notch with a sharp, punchy sound from the drums and feeling of depth to the guitars, composition is far better than before, with memorable melodies being supplied in full and the singer, Lazare, is more tuneful than before, though he's no Daniel Gildenlow. I knew the band had it in them as they've proved it in Winds but this is the only recording from Age of Silence that demonstrates these abilities. Pick of the (small) bunch here is the opening track, The Idea of Independence and the Reason Why It's Austere (almost as much of a mouthful as a Red Sparrows song title), for it contains the above mentioned elements at their best. In the end, though, there is only 15 minutes of music and the uncomfortable resemblance to Winds remains strong so 3 stars.

Age of Silence debut album, Acceleration, is a lesson in how to do things a little differently as well as in how not to do them. As fellow reviewer UMUR points out, this band doesn't intend to sound anything like Dream Theater (an easy trap to fall into) but they do sound annoyingly similar to the band Winds, who admittedly share 4 of this quintets number making that comparison even less surprising than the music.

Musicianship is unsurprisingely top notch here but its about all this band get right. Compositions are straight forward, predictably and distinctly cold. There's little here to suggest the band was even aiming for an emotional connection with the listener, something I feel is an integral requirement for music to excel. A series of uninspired melodies leads to a feeling that your listening to 9 identical songs and has a resulting effect of being totally unmemorable, I've listened to this album about 10 times and yet only an hour after playing it I will have no recollection of any of the melodies or rhythms employed here. My biggest problem, though, is with the vocalist. I'm not normally one to be bothered too much by less than stellar vocals but Lars Lazare Nedland has a truly horrible voice, its flat, dull and grating. The biggest surprise on this album is that the production doesn't hold up to much either. Its not that its hugely substandard but I just feel the kick drum sounds too soft with a distinct lack of punch and that the guitar solos come across sounding a bit muddy.

So, why not a 1 star rating? Well, the album does have a few saving graces to it. I mentioned earlier that I have the feeling that I'm listening to 9 identical songs, but the tenth song The Green Office and the Dark Desk Draw is definitely different to the rest with a sound and feel that reminds me of Arcturus second album, La Masquerade Infernal, and is without doubt the best song on here. Also, Andy Winter gives an excellent performance on keyboards providing an excellent counterpoint to the guitars, its just a shame that he couldn't save the album on his own. In the end I have to ask why though? The similarities to Winds are so strong that I feel it makes the point of this project rather redundant so I say get Winds Prominence and Demise instead, a much better buy.

"Acceleration" is the debut full-length studio album by Norwegian progressive metal act Age of Silence. The album was released through The End Records in September 2004. Age of Silence features quite a few prolific Norwegian musicians, who among others play or have played with acts like Arcturus, Borknagar, Mayhem, Solefald and Winds. Actually 4/5 of the lineup on "Acceleration" also played in Winds at that point.

The music on "Acceleration" is dark progressive metal with some really beautiful momemts but unfortunately also a lot of monotone and rather bland moments that drag the quality of the music down. The great thing about "Acceleration" is the dark atmosphere that makes the band´s music unique while some of the more mediocre things include some very standard guitar riffing, rather forgettable melody lines and monotone vocals. The tracks don´t stand out much from each other either. It´s obvious the band have a vision of creating original sounding music though and they do succeed in creating a distinct and quite original sound. The outcome is unfortunately somewhat questionable. There´s simply not enough memorable moments or catchy hooks to hold on to in the music. The album just seems to pass by without making much impact and when it´s through it´s more or less forgotten. It´s not really bad but rather forgettable and seriously lacking bite and passion.

The sound production is professional and suits the music well and besides the quite monotone vocal delivery the musicianship are on a high level, so on those parameters "Acceleration" is a quality release. It´s the songwriting and the way the band have chosen to constuct their tracks that leave me a bit cold. If you think dark progressive metal with monotone emotionless vocals and unmemorable melody lines sound like your poison, this might impress you more than it impresses me. Still a 3 star (60%) rating is warranted.

Age of Silence is a Norwegian project group, consisting of more or less famous musicians from different black metal bands. "Complications" is an EP released in 2005, to satisfy fans awaiting their second full length album.

Musically the band members background from (modern) black metal isn't very noticeable. Although several details and nuances in the soundscape are recognizeable from this genre of music - synths barely heard fleshing out the soundscape, slight nuances when changing tempo, melodic overlays from guitars tuned way down to create a very subtle effect - the music on this record has more similarities with doom metal than with black metal. The guitars are the main instrument here, but played mostly with long, drawn-out chords rather than the fast-paced aggressive riffing you'll find in black metal. The second most noticeable element here are the vocals, actual singing with clean vocals, most often harmonic and at times layered vocals as well. The overall soundscape is dark and gritty though, with the vocals bringing light and beauty into a rather grim and dark - but epic - soundscape.

As for the songs on this release, they are all good - especially if nuances and details are to your liking. The songs are too monotonus and repetetive though; at least for me. The first and last of these three songs have most variation, and due to that are better than the one in the middle for me.

Most people are familiar with Hellhammer (Jan Axel Blomberg) from the infamous Mayhem. However, he has involved himself with quite a few progressive metal acts, including Arcturus, the classical-music inspired Winds and this, Age of Silence. There are no "screamin' Norwegian" vocals, no rapid, Voivod-ish guitar riffs and no flying pig skulls ko'ing the headbanging followers here. And Hellhammer has surrounded himself with a group of very talented and able musicians to make this excellent project.

With songs that sound more like titles of Dali paintings, Andy Winter and Lars A. Nedland (aka Lazare) create a concept ep about a shopping mall in Hell, with some very evilly humorous lyrics, with lots of cleverly used satanic references (my favorite is the license plate of the Lamourghini Diablo blocking the only exit and the name of the coffee and bun kiosk-Beezlebuns). The best way to describe the sound is that it is reminiscent of Yes on harmony, but with a more agressive sound. Helge K. Haugen (Kobbergaard) and Joacim Solheim (Extant) provide expert guitarwork that brings alot of energy to the songs and complements the lyrics beautifully and Hellhammer proves to be a wonderful progressive metal drummer yet again.

This album is worth a spin or two, even by folks normally turned off by prog-metal, as there are no "cookie monster" vocals or over the top narrations that normally tend to deter people from the genre.

I've been blown away by this album right from the first listen and I am still now after spin #xx. The line-up of AGE OF SILENCE is almost identical with the one of the band WINDS. Nevertheless the sound is completely different from theirs, they manage here to sound heavy but not rough and at the same time melodic but not soft nor mellow. I wouldn't call it necessarily Avant-Metal what these guys are playing here, actually rather true progressive metal by blending the power of metal with the complexity, harmony and melody of classical music in a really perfect manner. One outstanding musician is keyboarder Andy Winter showing a very professional and elegant playing. Lazare's vocals, known already from SOLEFALD, another great band are absolutely unique, unmistakable and he's been blessed with one of the best clean voices in metal. For the folks being allergic against growling I'd like to emphasize that apart from some very occasional "filthy" vocal parts most of them ARE clean on here. Hellhammer's drumming here is not as gracious as with WINDS but much more powerful and very intricate with many rhythm changes, sometimes even jazzy.

This album was a wonderful surprise in progmetal when I found it, it contains by far not the usual stuff available and is completely different from everything in this field I heard so far, whether it's OPETH, ARCTURUS, BORKNAGAR or HAGGARD to name at least one not coming from Scandinavia but from my home country. Extremely complex but at the same time pleasant and nice to listen music suitable both for the advanced metal and prog fan. Highly recommended!