THE PROPHECY

The music on "Salvation" is at it´s core atmospheric doom metal, but the band skillfully incorporate elements from doom/death metal and progressive metal too. The doom/death element on the album consists of occasional growling vocals. The growling vocals are not a dominant feature in the music though and most vocals on the album are clean sung. The 5 tracks on the 49:25 minutes long album are predominanly slow building (and for the most part around 10 minutes long) and dynamic tracks featuring both mellow melancholic sections and more majestic heavy parts. Sometimes I´m reminded of a heavier version of contemporary Anathema, sometimes a Dead Can Dance influence creeps in and after listening to the album and digging into the music a bit deeper, I´ve also encountered a pretty obvious Fates Warning influence.

The musicianship are on a high level and while lead vocalist Matt Lawson isn´t the most distinct sounding vocalist out there, he is actually pretty skilled and his delivery suits the music well. Personally I could have done without the growling vocals, which are pretty anonymous, but they appear relatively seldom (they are most dominant in the closing track "Redemption"), so it´s not a major issue. "Salvation" features a professional, clear, and powerful sounding production too (although the distorted guitar tone could have been slightly more powerful) and all in all the album is a high quality release on all parameters. A 4 star (80%) rating is deserved.

I realise this is a bit damning, but with such a saturation of vocals on this album it's a make or break part of the listening experience. Vocals in any band tend to be a very subjective matter - what I consider painful someone else might find delightful. It's a matter of perspective. The music here is good, but there isn't the same atmosphere as on their first album, 'Ashes', nor the catchy guitar sections found on 'Revelations'. What you have on this album is very crushingly heavy doom metal played well, but its not ground-breaking, especially in 2009 when this record was released.

An interesting addition on this album is adding a cello to the mix, and getting rid of keyboards. Perhaps this was The Prophecy's answer to My Dying Bride's use of violin throughout their own career? Its a nice addition, and adds some different texture to the softer parts of the music and overall I think it adds to the music on offer here. There are a few exciting guitar parts, for example on the third track 'Don't Forget', however these guitar parts are quickly ruined by Matt Lawson bad singing over the top of them. There are also some beautiful mellow moments in this album, the fourth track 'Echoes' for example has a lovely moment of cello, bass and clean guitar, but it isn't allowed to develop and blossom on its own without vocals being laid on top of it. There are just too many vocals on this album - there are precious few moments where the music is given space to naturally develop and progress by itself.

I hate to be so negative when reviewing this album - I'm trying to be honest in my feelings and isn't that the point? The Prophecy are a band I like, I consider myself a fan, I love their debut album, and their second album is good also. But this is an album which gets very little attention from me. In all fairness this is probably somewhere between 2 and 3 stars, but if I gave 'Revelations' 3-stars, which I consider better than this, then unfortunately this one can only receive 2-stars. Though if you like their vocalist and his style this would probably be at least a 3-star album - so please don't let my negativity put you off!!

Sounds great, right? Unfortunately the clean vocals of Matt Lawson just aren't that convincing. When reviewing progressive doom metal you can't help but think about My Dying Bride, the daddies of the genre. When I compare Matt Lawson to My Dying Bride vocalist, Aaron Stainthorpe, I find the former lacking in range and dare I say it, talent. Matt Lawson's death metal vocals, which are few and far between on this album are respectable, but his cleanly sung vocals are hit-and-miss. Some sections sound good, some sections are rather excruciating for the listener, and detract from the music here.

There are some wonderful musical arrangements and themes on this album. The opening guitar section of 'Odyssey' is fantastic. There are plenty of very memorable guitar riffs and moments through-out this rather long (almost 70 minute) album. The guitar solo in 'Revelations' is delightful with a great tone and simple, but entertaining melodic structure. There are twists and turns and dynamic changes throughout the record.

I would suggest this is a good album, but for whatever reason I've always preferred 'Ashes' to this one, despite the fact that 'Revelations' feels more refined with a stronger identity. I can only put it down to the clean vocals on this album which I feel detract from the excellent instrumental music present on this record. If this album had really strong clean vocals I think it would be a 4-star album without problem, but as it stands 3-stars is as much as I can offer.

The Prophecy have always been massively over-shone by the daddies of doom metal, My Dying Bride. Like MDB, The Prophecy feature gloomy music, laced with gothic tones, thick atmosphere and deeply textured musical landscapes constructed from heavily distorted guitars and moody keyboards.

On 'Ashes' there are plenty of raspy tortured vocals, like all good doom records should have! But there are clean vocals as well, spoken passages, soft acoustic guitar and lots of musical variation throughout. Make no mistake, this is definitely progressive music. The tracks are long and leave plenty of room for musical progression and transformation. The heavy parts of the music are crushingly heavy and the softer parts of the music are gentle and melancholic, and above all overwhelmingly depressing! This is not an album to listen to if you are feeling down!

I have a lot of praise for this album - but having said that in 'Ashes' we do find the band struggling a little bit for their own identity in places. This is an album from a band still finding its feet and discovering their own style - something which they do find on later releases. The reason I say this is that the inclusion of the fifth track, 'Blackened Desire', adds very little to this album and would have been better off staying unrecorded. It just doesn't fit with the rest of the music here. You sense that this track was one of their early demo songs and they felt at this point in their career it was a worthy inclusion on the album. The problem I have with 'Blackened Desire' is that it's not progressive, and is just a straight-forward black metal song. It doesn't really have any place here with these other pieces of music.

But, there are a lot of excellent moments on this record, and it deserves to be listened to as a whole piece of music. Stand-out tracks are 'Killing Fields', 'Dawn' and 'Till Light Enshrouds'. I'd recommend this album to anyone who enjoys the work of My Dying Bride, though tracking down this album might be difficult! Definitely a 4-star record, despite the few identity issues it has.

It's no surprise then, that after only one listen, I was already putting this at the top of my 2013 list, and after four, I can quite honestly say this will finish up there too. The band blends beautiful baritones similar to that of Opeth's Mikael Akerfeldt with the aesthetics of doom metal, but if it weren't for the greatly executed death growling segments, I would say this has very little to do with metal itself, most of the time developing a modern progressive rock feel similar to that of Riverside and recent end Porcupine Tree. But unlike Riverside, who also have a release ranking high in my 2013 list, The Prophecy avoid tedious solos, using the doom approach of only soloing when absolutely necessary, and going for a more modern production sounds, unlike Riverside's strange 70's sound job.

With 5 tracks spanning only 50 minutes, "Salvation" keeps within a decent range, and doesn't suffer the common doom trait of overstaying its welcome. But the frequent breaks from the slow and pummeling to well-voiced and melodic mean the 5 songs fly by, with the albums four 10+ minute tracks barely feeling like epics at all.

"Salvation" is The Prophecy's fourth album and the first to grace my ears, but judging from this album alone, this is a band who are in dire need of recognition, blending two very good styles to produce a possible album of the year. And it has a good cover as well.

The album was recorded at Priory studios in Sutton Coldfields, engineered by Greg Chandler (Esoteric) and mastered by James Plotkin (Khanate, Lotus Eater's etc). These guys deserve a special mention as it is the way that the sounds have been constructed that really make this stand out. I have long been a fan of MDB, but to my ears the apprentices may have surpassed the masters with this. This really is an incredible piece of work. www.auralmusic.com

Salvation is a rather interesting album from a stylistic perspective, as it maintains a doomy and melancholic flair throughout its full duration, but doesn't quite sit right as a traditional doom metal release. The Prophecy borrows from alternative rock, death metal, and Fates Warning-inspired progressive metal in addition to more 'normal' sounding doom metal, and the result is an album that sounds fresh and inspired. Touches of bands like My Dying Bride (especially in their use of violin) or Confessor do appear throughout Salvation, but on the whole, this is a very unique effort.

Nearly all of the tracks here surpass the ten minute mark, so this is an album that will require some attention from its listener. I enjoyed this from first listen, however, and the band's contrast of light and heavy sections especially grabbed my attention. Not too dissimilar from Opeth, The Prophecy utilizes clean guitar sections and singing - sometimes for extended portions of time - and contrasts them with heavier doom riffs and powerful growling vocals. The Opeth comparison is not entirely valid, however, as the heavy portions always remain in doom metal territory rather than a death metal ditto. On the whole, though, the extended compositions and dispiriting atmospheres are likely to appeal to fans of more adventurous metal music. Everything from the funeral dirge opening in "Salvation" to the highly progressive "Redemption" is memorable and engaging, and it's in the songwriting department where The Prophecy perhaps shine the brightest.

There really aren't too many doom metal albums that manage to be as diverse as Salvation while still maintaining a consistent atmosphere, so I'll highly recommend this one to fans of the genre. An engaging and beautiful experience from start to finish, Salvation is an amazing record that marks one of the musical highlights of early 2013. Great work, gentlemen!