ASPHYXIUM ZINE

Monday, November 21, 2022

Full Length Review: Death Embrace "Vampyre" (Independent) by Dave Wolff

Project: Death Embrace
Country: United Kingdom
Genre: Black metal
Full length: Vampyre
Format: Digital album
Label: Independent
Release date: October 31, 2022
In this season when nature is going to sleep, I find it warms my heart to once again visit ancient times, cold landscapes, rotting crypts, and bloodthirsty ghouls. It seems as if old crypts are being reopened for those with the perception to receive them at a time when bands like Darkthrone and Mayhem are revisiting their roots and processing them into the new millennium. Prepare to have this done for you and to be drawn into the darkness of a world created by Death Embrace a one-man project from the lands of Hecate Enthroned, Bal-Sagoth, and Cradle of Filth, and induced to a state of hypnosis from which there is no return.
“Vampyre”, the third full length release from founding member D.M after “Dark Reflections of a Tortured Soul” and “Unholy Trinity II” and their debut demo “Unholy Trinity I”, will transport you to the starless, moonless world of necromancy and enchantment and leave you there without a chance to return to the ordinary. Death Embrace is a good place to begin a journey toward darker shores if your usual listening fare includes Burzum, Black Funeral, Vlad Tepes, and Darkness Enshroud. D.M composed the songs on “Vampyre” around spells written to summon what he calls the primordial Vampyric essence and the beauty of immortality.
The songs of this musician embody those creatures that eat lifeblood from other creatures, especially in the vocals that seem to transform him into one of those creatures. As a guitarist and keyboardist, he makes use of overlapping progressions to create simple, complex, and elusively soporific songs. Lead and rhythm guitars are usually mixed simultaneously with a third track consisting of keyboards, mixed a little lower for additional subtlety, occasionally revealing more than one soundscape through his songwriting.
The repetitive loops create a rapturous atmosphere effortlessly comparable to 90s vampiric black metal, allowing its "kvlt" aspects to be a viable mass appeal source. Only the drums could have been given more prominence and echo in the final mix, but the rest of the album more than adequately captures the world he sought to convey. The keyboard instrumental piece that is the final song establishes the existence of this world on earth. –Dave Wolff

Lineup:
D.M: Vocals, all instruments

Track list:
1. From Beyond The Veil
2. The Dead Cold Grave
3. Vampyric Blood Rite
4. Awaken
5. Vampyre
6. Coven (Instrumental)

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