INTO THE LIGHT

The Prophecy's 'Into The Light' is the bands third full length studio album, released early in 2009. It gets off to a crushingly heavy, if a little boring start, with the opening track 'Into The Light'. Mid-way through this song the music calms and mellows, and softly sung vocals from Matt Lawson kick in. And unfortunately this is where the 'Into The Light' loses me every time... It's the same complaint I have with their previous release, 'Revelations' - I just don't think Matt Lawson is a particularly good clean vocalist. His death metal growl is passable and quite enjoyable, but his clean vocals are, dare I say it... painful to listen to!

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!!