An Erotic End Of Times - Chapter One (2017) - Review

Band: An Erotic End Of Times
Album title: Chapter One
Release date: 2 June 2017
Label: Echozone

Tracklist:
01. I Am Become Death
02. Love Is The End
03. No Rights Except To Die
04. A Freaky World
05. One Second After
06. Writings On The Wall
07. The Hangman
08. The Origin Of All Coming Evil

The French duo with a band name that can trigger the imagination and questions about its real meaning, offers to the world their debut album which is thematically and also musically both, celebration of life and death. Before forming An Erotic End Of Times in 2015, the two musicians, Philippe and Erwan, were already working together between 2005 and 2006 in the industrial rock/metal band Porn and it seems that after all this years the two have found the right compositional chemistry and created one of the albums that gives us faith in gothic metal.

Chapter One consists of eight tracks that are in a very intriguing manner showing us the way to the end of times. If you expect some apocalyptic ambiances you are right, it smells and it tastes like that, it evolves like some dark ambient albums with similar thematics, but yet this is in the first place a metal album. The two musicians are blending together that traditional gothic metal sound which we adored on EverEve's albums Regret or Stormbirds, or on Darkseed's Give Me Light and Diving Into Darkness to name a few, with cinematic soundscapes when they are putting into the picture atmospheric moments with several speeches, like the very popular Oppenheimer's ones. With introspective lyrics bearing an universal message of a major purpose to get us aware of the end of times, end of an era and end of the world, An Erotic End Of Times built up a very solid album that offers an interesting and very dynamic sonic journey.

The album opens up with short "I Am Become Death", which after the Oppenheimer's speech its instrumental side reminds me to something that could be easily taken from My Dying Bride's Songs Of Darkness, Words Of Light. What follows is nicely flowing gothic metal, with a couple of dark industrial and some gothic rock touches, but what caught my attention in the first place is the density and dynamics of the sound. Really good driving guitars, gloomy keys, nice dark vocals with many variations, sometimes thrown in your face, other times quite emotional. Often very melodic and captivating, like for example is the nicely building up "No Rights Except To Die", it's like a missing link between Fields Of The Nephilim and EverEve, if you ask me. Everything seems perfectly structured, well balanced and in a kind of harmony, until the only real letdown which is "A Freaky World". The track starts and initially evolves good, but when the refrain comes over with those rather high pitched vocals and bland instrumental side everything goes into ashes. Ok, fortunately this is the only track which is a failed attempt to be a bit more modern and in the end it just turns out to be the weakest side of the band shown in here.

The second part of the album is even more cinematic, it builds up in tension like some sort of a suspenseful movie. The sound is becoming more and more rich, there are many layers that make the ambiance quite thick, and so the listener will need some devotion and time to discover all of its hidden things, just listen to "Writings On The Wall" with kind of a vibe that has something in common with Anathema from The Silent Enigma or Eternity, or to the dark turmoil named "The Hangman", with nice acoustic beginning and after that great vibrant bass lines that will make your body tremble. The atmosphere is throughout quite cold and dark, yet it has the power, not only the music, but as well the whole album structure, to penetrate your mind and give you an indispensable haunting journey into the most obscure corners of your mind, which then ends with ambiental "The Origin Of All Coming Evil".

An Erotic End Of Times did an album that is in my opinion one of those with high value and big significance for the whole once great genre called gothic metal. Musically it might not be that original, but how everything is composed and structured is certainly to be admired. It has some flaws that I mentioned before, but considering the fact that this is the debut album, the two musicians united under the name An Erotic End Of Times did a really good job. If you are a fan of traditional gothic metal with fascinating atmospheric sound, yet with interesting and innovative twists, than don't waste any time and grab your copy of Chapter One.

Review written by: T.V.
Rating: 8/10

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