Cemetary
Black Vanity (CD) 1994 Black Mark Production
Cemetary's third album is the predecessor to 'Sundown'. As such, the difference between both albums is not that strong. Cemetary stands for mid-paced, riff oriented doomy metal, with slight resemblances to Paradise Lost ('Draconian Times' era) and sometimes to Darren White's vocals. The first few songs sound as if they could have been on the later Cemetary albums too, but after those, there are some more experimental songs, like 'Black Flowers of Passion', which could have been a track from Evereve, or 'Sweet Tragedy' (including a bass solo!) and not to forget the final song 'Rosemary Taste the Sky' which is almost traditional doom, including groovy riffing. The guitar riffing is one of the major pluspoints of this album. Cemetary knows how to get one riff going when another one is slowly fading away beneath it. With the dialogues between the two guitars, and even more so, when both of them are playing together, you can feel the magic. But it is only with the next album 'Sundown' that this magic is approaching perfection. This is certainly an album to check out if you like bittersweet mid-paced doomy and melancholic music with great songwriting. And if you don't like the album, you can still use the disc as a mirror.	1. Bitter Seed 2. Ebony Rain 3. Hunger of the Innocent 4. Scarecrow 5. Black Flowers of Passion 6. Last Departure/Serpentine Parade 7. Sweet Tragedy 8. Pale Autumn Fire 9. Out in Sand 10. Rosemary Taste the Sky Approx. 45 minutes
Reviewed by: Heiko Isselee
Sundown (CD) 1996 Black Mark Production
The first thing I think of when I hear this album is Paradise Lost. This band undoubtedly has found some influence there. Which is not a bad thing of course, because they do a lot with it. They add some grooves, some more gothic feel, quite some keyboards and play their songs a bit more mid-tempo. If I am not mistaken, some members of this band left it to begin a new band called Sundown after this album. The band Sundown plays music very much in the vein of this album, though a little softer and more electronic [Editor note: Only their first. The second Sundown album has an industrial sound like NiN]. On this album we hear nicely worked out guitar melodies, real "songs" that stand on theirselves. Vocals are somewhere in between singing and screaming, slightly altered electronically. Also keyboards have an important role in the melodies. The lyrics are very doomy (for those who know: a bit in the vein of Sentenced) and quite poetic. All in all a very nice album. Not so very heavy, not true doom-metal, but maybe very appreciable for those who also like mid-tempo, slightly animated (and dare I say danceable?) doomy metal.	1. Elysia 2. Closer to the pain 3. Last transmission 4. Sundown 5. Ophidian 6. Primal 7. New dawn coming 8. The embrace 9. Morningstar 10. The wake Approx. 40 minutes
Reviewed by: Heiko Isselee