ENCHANTMENT

ENCHANTMENT “Cold Soul Embrace”

By Octopi Mills

I must quote the promotional write up here for an important historical sort of merit that they no doubt can explain better than your author can before we move forward:

“ENCHANTMENT was forged in 1991 in the midst of the UK death/doom metal movement alongside the likes of PARADISE LOST, ANATHEMA, and MY DYING BRIDE. In that year, they released a self-funded demo, “A Tear For Young Eloquence”, and were subsequently signed to Century Media Records before recording and releasing their debut album “Dance The Marble Naked” in early 1994. The band played alongside many great death metal bands of the era including BOLT THROWER, ANATHEMA, CANCER, and CRADLE OF FILTH before disbanding in 1995, leaving behind the compositions of an entire second album that had yet to be recorded.

Fast forward nearly 25 years. With the reissue of their debut album on vinyl for the first time (and after numerous successful reissues earlier on CD), ENCHANTMENT officially regrouped. In 2020, the band started the unenviable task of resurrecting all the original rehearsal tapes and lyrical content from that lost second album and started working on demoing the tracks. This caught the attention of both Transcending Records and Cosmic Key Creations with whom the band ultimately decided to sign with, with the prospect of finally recording and co-releasing their sophomore full-length. It is unknown if any other similar band can claim to have written almost a full album in the peak of the British death/doom metal explosion and for it to have never been recorded or released. Yet twenty-eight years to the day exactly that “Dance The Marble Naked” was first released, the band are now about to unveil “Cold Soul Embrace”.


So it seems with have a time capsule sort of scenario, taken up again by men of another time. While this could be a dangerous sort of thing; a sacred sort of thing like unearthing the dead or stealing weapons from an old bog, it seems these fellows have pulled off the crime like a caper. The sound is newly restored by means of modern conventions and the sciences of men in studios but harbors pieces like all death and doom did of the era stated above. Passages are enriched, perhaps, by keys, and clean instruments at times, giving it a dreamy and epic sound with the usual sprawl and lengths of play known to the genre.

The band adds things in that set them aside the projects of the day like ANATHEMA and MY DYING BRIDE- things like subtle effects and vocal stylings that set them close to their ilk without being outright copycats or borrowers. The using of more swirling melodies and beautiful passages set them apart in this. Fans of the above-mentioned bands and old PARADISE LOST will likely enjoy this as not only something fresh and new but old and restored.

TRANSCENDING RECORDS

ENCHANTMENT