Artist: Descendants of Cain
Title: Songs from a Vanishing World
Genre: Rock / Metal / Goth / Ambient
Release Date: 14th October 2011
Label: Echozone
Album Review
DESCENDANTS OF CAIN is a project that has released their fifth studio album. The band was formed under the idea of writing about the world and how we all participate in it; events, people, things, and so on. This album definitely ticks the boxes for writing about the world, but has it overstepped it's mark? The introduction is quite mind-bending and feels like a dramatic entrance into what only can be described as a generic-style rock song. The vocals and lyrics bring a breath of originality to the track, but the backing music still feels wanting. As soon as the third track started, I had to check if I was still listening to the same album because it felt like a complete turn around. 'Pornography for the Soul' gives us a complete overhaul of the instruments, or at least the way they are played, and brings a relaxed beat, deep, penetrating vocals, and bland spoken lines which get every syllable of the words into your ears.
The next track, 'Rush', follows the same patterns, but packs slightly more punch into the track by giving the vocals more attitude, adding distortion to the guitars, but still maintaining the electronic breakdowns which fuelled the previous track. One song on the record has such piercing lyrics. This is what I was thinking of when I asked if they had overstepped the mark. 'Refuge the Thought' sings harshly about loneliness and his position in the world, but it also re-uses the spoken style from 'Pornography for the Soul' for news-like readings of exaggeration of the world. This is where I find it odd, whether those things are too controversial to exaggerate. Maybe this is what makes the band and music so great; their willingness to submit the truth of the world, and what it could succumb to? Another track which would also support this questioning is 'The Road'. Crossing so many vocal lines it seems to be preaching the worst of mankind.
The rest of the album continues to mix the electronic, gothic and classic rock backing, but adds sweeping female backing that always seems to add a new dimension to each of the track and time it enters, a dimension that is ever changing depending on how you understand the rest of the track, or even the album; whether you see it as expecting the worse from controversial situations and stating it in an unforgiving manner, or that DESCENDANTS OF CAIN just want to educate the masses and get into our heads what we could do, now or one day. Overall, Sounds from a Vanishing World creates mixed feelings, definitely worth seeing for yourself though.
Tracklist
01. The Final Awakening
02. Lullaby for the Masses
03. Pornography for the Soul
04. Rush
05. Pied Piper of Metropolis
06. Refuge from Thought
07. This House
08. Clockwork Monsters
09. The Road
10. Pure Illusion
11. Drift
12. The Thirst
Line-up
D M Kruger
Dan Phillips
Steve Gerrard
Website
http://www.descendantsofcain.co.uk
Cover Picture
Rating
Music: 4
Sound: 6
Total: 5 / 10
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