Isole – Silent Ruins

It’s just one year after “Bliss of Solitude” and Swedish Isole strike back with their fourth release “Silent Ruins”. Despite the sort time between the two albums, they manage to make steps forward in terms of songwriting and in refining their sound.

Silent Ruins is as highly emotive and melancholic as a pure Epic Doom metal album has to be. Besides the typical for the genre ultra-slow and mid tempo parts, Isole dare to enrich their compositions with violent breakouts, desperate acoustic parts and even some brutal vocals in the opening and closing tracks. The piano based “Peccatum” caught me by surprise. If one can manage to listen the album so far emotionally unaffected, this is the time to be overwhelmed by the sorrow it evokes. The rhythm section is solid, the guitars really nice, but the vocals is what is really shining. The melodic double vocal lines of Daniel and Crister (which bring to mind the early Solitude Aeturnus efforts) are simply stunning.

In terms of production, Isole made o good job in recording and mixing the album by themselves. Maybe they should experiment more in the future their “heretical” ideas and utilise them extensively since it works out pretty well. Anyway, even if the follow the traditional doom sound, Isole are climbing their way up to the pantheon of doom metal.