The Blood Divine
Awaken

Several ghosts hover over this album, some real...

In the year of Our Lord 1996, Peaceville releases Awaken under the name of a previously unknown group, The Blood Divine. This moniker will soon be identified as the group of Darren J. White, the singer of Anathema until Pentecost III (their strictly doom period, to be clear). Fresh from the split, White recruits former Cradle Of Filth members Paul Ryan on guitar and Benjamin Ryan on keyboards (present in the formation The Principle Of Evil Made Flesh) and Was Sarginson on drums (also from the Cradle orbit). P.J. on the other guitar and Steve Maloney on bass complete a respectable line-up, which finally allows Darren to express his personality to the fullest after the fruitful but tormented years with the challenging Cavanagh brothers. Thus, while on one side in Awaken there are evident and inevitable stylistic references to the masterpieces of his recent past (here are some "ghosts"), on the other White gives free rein to his unconditional love for seventies progressive. Keyboards, synthesizers, but also organs and hammonds undoubtedly play a dominant role compared to the guitars, which still roar fiercely in some episodes. To make you understand, only "Artemis" (and we're on the eighth track!!) directly starts with a distorted guitar riff, while "These Deepest Feelings" is only (so to speak) a short acoustic ballad. To be fair, the love for progressive and the seventies is a sentiment widely shared by every doomster at various levels (everyone knows the turn of Anathema themselves in this sense) and by other unsuspecting metalheads (...does the name Dan Swano mean anything to you?!?).

The general aura of this album is spectral, decadent, visionary; the atmosphere is not so frosty as to freeze our feelings and annihilate us immediately but, alas, cool enough to keep us still in a glimmer of life but without hope anymore! One gets the feeling of being the last living beings in the ancient rooms of a palace that has seen better days. As sole company, yellowed memories, regret, and the sound of rain on the windows. The lyrics, highly inspired, are dictated by the death of a loved one, seemingly Darren's mother (another "ghost"). Awaken, therefore, requires a particular disposition of mind to be listened to. In the first track, "So Serene", the long and disturbing synth intro recalls "Speak To Me" by Pink Floyd, but the serenity of a Gilmour's guitar opening never comes, instead, the anguish of choked riffs from completely different guitars and Darren White's graceless, nasal voice. Sometimes the feedback-leaving guitars make us think of Anathema's trademark; this feature also recurs in other tracks on the album. Right after, in "Moonlight Adorns", a magnificent bass line introduces the hammond on which the guitars at some point engage in a furious gallop. This could be considered the most representative prog/doom track of the entire album, but all the tracks are excellent. How to choose between the restlessness of "Wilderness", the gothic of "Aureole" (if not for the hammond, it would not look out of place on Shades Of God by fellow countrymen Paradise Lost), or the slightly folk aftertaste of "Oceans Rise"? How to choose between the heaviness of "In Crimson Dreams" and the dark epic of "Hearts Of Ebony"? Impossible. And yes, the ethereal female voice of the spectral "These Deepest Feelings" and "Warm Summer Rain" is indeed Ruth's, already in "J'ai fait Une Promesse" from Serenades by Anathema. Another familiar ghost.

But it's best to say it in clear letters that, even despite the overwhelming past of the musicians involved, Awaken shines with its own light. Attention, this light does not give hope to the unwary listener...