Empire Drowns is on tracks.
After nearly fifteen years of activity, the band composed of Michael Hvolgaard Andersen (vocals, Thorium, Withering Surface), Thomas Birk (guitar, Urkraft), Anders Ro Nielsen (keyboards, ex-Saturnus), Marco Angioni (bass, Meridian, Street Fighter, Withering Surface), and Kim Jørgensen (drums) unveils its second album, Endless Nights, on Mighty Music.
Volcanic Funeral immediately sets the tone with an impressive and melancholic sound, but also with a few colder and more aggressive touches, allowing the vocals to wander through the different melodies that float around us. Screams and striking vocals echo each other before giving way to the gentle A Choir Of Fallen Angels, which offers a rather Old School approach to Doom/Death and its majestic Gothic roots, allowing for more violent accelerations before bursting into flames on Doomsday Clock, which is even heavier. Lead parts are also quite piercing, perfectly accompanying the screams, but Stoneheart calms the spirits and offers soaring keyboards that naturally introduce the return of the rather heady but still quite dark and striking saturation. The chaos inhabited by these “I feel everything” lyrics haunts us before we reach the end of the song, followed by the catchy Santiago Sunrise, which reveals a jerky rhythm but also a chorus that we can already see ourselves chanting with our fists raised between two waves. The atmosphere of The Great Flood is relatively similar, letting the drums lead the way, moving from a simple, moderate rhythm to massive accelerations, but the backing vocals give it a more accessible feel, while Endless Nights returns to a mysterious, almost agonizing slowness, weaving hypnotic harmonics. The painful cries bring the song to life more intensely, especially during the haunting passages, before finally giving way to Silence, which fills the air with a contrasting sound between heavy softness and more intoxicating leads, particularly during the solo that plunges us back into darkness. The final moments are once again a little more theatrical, but it is ultimately with Life Is Fading that the band leads us to the end of their album, using growls coupled with choirs to intensify the vocals and make them even more distressing, closing this chapter in style.
While Empire Drowns is still relatively unknown, the Danes intend to change that with Endless Nights, which draws on Gothic roots to make its riffs a veritable cradle of auditory misery. A true moment of bliss.
85/100