Change is often synonymous with rebirth, as it is for An Autumn.
After fifteen years under the name An Autumn for Crippled Children, Mchl (guitar/vocals/keyboards, Cold Body Radiation, Our Throne), Td (bass/keyboards) and Chr (drums) announce the change of name for the Dutch band, as well as the release of Ethereal, the album that marks this transformation, and is the first release on Bölverk Records label.
Melancholy seizes us as soon as The Kind of Grief That Never Leaves You begins, creating within its dissonance more playful touches, such as heady keyboards and dark harmonics before welcoming gripping vocal parts. The chaotic approach is interesting, but Last Night adds a dose of raw fury to the mix – mainly driven by screams – which further fuels the gap between all the elements of the composition. Without realizing it, we find ourselves caught up in this spiral of sound, which suddenly stops to make way for Dreaming, where we quickly feel intense distress and more vaporous DSBM influences, but which also transform the vocals. A return to gentleness in the opening moments of Like Death, but then the riffs suddenly darken and the torrent of darkness begins anew, taking our minds with it to the rhythmic beat. The opening notes of eponymous track Ethereal are definitely far too joyous not to be tinged with the band’s heavy influences, which have no qualms about alternating spikes of rage with hypnotic elements to lose us in their complex picture. Just Empty returns to more haunting passages, the better to integrate its cries of pain and soothing melodies, then The Flow of The River brings us back to a more piercing, but also thicker sound, which may seem contradictory, but in the end seems very natural. The keyboards eventually take over the space, before giving way to We Never End, where the screams become visceral again, testifying to the vocalist’s involvement in his creation and continuing to fuel the duality of this track, which comes to an end in one fell swoop.
An Autumn is more than just a name change. The band’s influences remain present in all shades of Black Metal and Shoegaze, letting Ethereal show us each of its facets in turn.
90/100
