Evergrey – From Dark Discoveries To Heartless Portraits
Evergrey – From Dark Discoveries To Heartless Portraits
Napalm Records
Release Date: 15/12/2023
Running Time: 73:45
Review by Richard Oliver
6/10
Swedish masters of melancholy Evergrey are celebrating their thirtieth anniversary as a band. Quite a monumental milestone for the band who I class as one of my absolute favourites and a band who have been on an absolute roll of late with a stream of albums that are some of the finest that the band have ever produced. Evergrey have a fairly unique sound that falls within the realms of Power and Progressive Metal but is full of darkness and melancholy, and as such appealing to a cross section of fans of bands from Kamelot and Symphony X to Paradise Lost and Katatonia. The band’s dark Melodic Metal sound is indebted to the passionate and mournful vocals of Tom S. Englund who is one of the finest and criminally underrated singers in heavy music.
To celebrate their thirty years of existence, Evergrey are releasing a compilation titled “From Dark Discoveries To Heartless Portraits” which namechecks their debut album “The Dark Discovery” and their latest one “A Heartless Portrait: The Orphean Testament”. Rather than a compilation of previously released material, this is more of a compilation of odds and ends which is being released in a multitude of formats with the most lavish including an extremely limited 112 pages hardcover book.
The first third of the album is made up of live recordings taken from their 2022 European tour. These are of fantastic quality and capture the power of the band’s live performances full of energy and passion and the band sound like they are loving life whilst on stage as well as covering a nice variety of albums from the Evergrey back catalogue. The second third is made up of vocal and piano led versions of songs from the band’s last album. These are very much in the style of Tom S. Englund’s side project Silent Skies, and the stripped down nature of these songs showcases what fantastic songs they are and their melancholic nature really shines. It is interesting to hear some pretty heavy songs restructured for just vocals and piano and quite simply they are absolutely stunning. The final third of the album is made up of demo recordings and rough mixes which is the weakest part of the release. Despite being interesting to hear the building blocks of these songs, they aren’t something you are gonna want to revisit after hearing the one time.
Despite this being a celebratory album of 30 years of Evergrey, it is not particularly expansive with the majority of the songs coming from the last album “A Heartless Portrait: The Orphean Testament” with the early days of the band not covered at all. Some songs are included in multiple versions and despite how great a song that ‘Call Out The Dark’ is, it is a bit unnecessary to have three different versions of it in one compilation. This release is a mixed bag as there is some fantastic material with the live recordings and the piano vocal alternative versions but the demos and rough mixes are rather pointless. With this being a release celebrating the history of the band, it would have been better to include some old material out of the Evergrey archives but maybe older material was unavailable so this is what we got. Not a bad release but this is definitely one for the absolute die hard Evergrey fan only.
TRACKLISTING:
01. Call Out The Dark (Live from Budapest)
02. Where August Mourns (Live from Nuremberg)
03. My Allied Ocean (Live from Aschaffenburg)
04. A Touch Of Blessing (Live from Nuremberg)
05. Recreation Day (Live from Lyon)
06. King Of Errors (Live from Vosselaar)
07. Save Us (Piano Vocal Version)
08. Call Out The Dark (Piano Vocal Version)
09. Blindfolded (Piano Vocal Version)
10. Midwinter Calls (Piano Vocal Version)
11. A Silent Arc (Demo Version – Instrumental)
12. Save Us (Rough Mix)
13. Midwinter Calls (Rough Mix)
14. Call Out The Dark (Rough Mix)
15. Blindfolded (Rough Mix)
LINE-UP:
Tom S. Englund – Vocals & Guitars
Henrik Danhage – Guitars
Rikard Zander – Keyboards
Jonas Ekdahl – Drums
Johan Niemann – Bass
LINKS:
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