Isole
Silent Ruins

Don't worry, this is the last one. I've now said everything there is to say about this group and I hope that thanks to the previous three reviews someone has delved deeper into the listening of these four Swedish doom metallers. Silent ruins is the latest album released by the band, which came out at the beginning of 2009 and continues the journey through the suffering and despair that the Gavle group has embarked on for five years now, a time in which they have released four albums with some regularity.

This Silent ruins, whose cover already reveals the musical direction of the band, is a combined synthesis of everything that has been done in the past. From "Forevermore" it reprises the power and the evocative "lightness" of the sounds. From "Throne of void" it repeats the more accessible and catchy melodies, from their masterpiece "Bliss of solitude" it reprises the darkest and most aberrant epic. A fusion of tones that generates an album that runs on well-defined tracks, but which contains stylistic variations worth noting.

The fourth studio album by Isole, however, does not represent the definitive confirmation of the band, which compared to Bliss of solitude takes a clear step back. The strong depressing and obsessive charge is lost in favor of more classic heavy structures like those dictated by the pair "Forlorn" and "Nightfall", far from the typical archetypes of the band and where the singing becomes less suffering, to reach higher tones. Perhaps the four, in wanting to "evolve" musically, chose the path of "safety" by exploring simpler shores even though less congenial to them. More tied to the decadence of the previous work, the two songs that open and close the album. "From the dark" and "Dark clouds" are indeed massive and dark pieces, in which the great compositional ability of Isole is highlighted more, but the most successful track, in my opinion, is the one that most deviates from the band's canons, demonstrating that courage is also rewarded. "Peccatum" is a touching ballad that moves on a sonic carpet of acoustic guitars and keyboards. The rest of the songs do not add anything to the career of the Scandinavians, who perhaps, satisfied with the success attributed to them by critics, decided not to overdo it and limit themselves to retracing, albeit with small variations, what good had been done in the past. The result is a good album but nothing more, which is played entirely on songs quite similar to each other. For the rest, great technique, excellent production with consequent sound cleanliness, but nothing that can lift the fortunes of an album that in the end is the weakest in the band's discography.

1. "From The Dark" (11:02)
2. "Forlorn" (6:46)
3. "Nightfall" (6:57)
4. "Hollow Shrine" (6:55)
5. "Soulscarred" (6:26)
6. "Peccatum" (4:01)
7. "Dark clouds" (11:40)