No Tears is the latest release from Finnish death-doomsters Antagonist Zero, and it’s a five-track mini-CD featuring three original tracks and two cover songs.
No Tears is a fairly good listen, with each track packing a good punch thanks to the instrumentation that is crushingly heavy whilst also having a nice peppering of melody within the music, which is great to witness. Additionally, the harsh vocals have a lot of meat to them, which give the songs some extra body, and whilst the clean vocals do leave a little to be desired at times, with them occasionally wavering and sounding a little weak on occasion, as a whole everything flows rather well as one to the next.
The three original tracks show a lot of promise coming from the five piece and the title track is especially noteworthy. Beginning with a rather gentle melodic introduction, when the fuller sound kicks in, coupled with the deep and powerful vocals, it hits you like a tonne of bricks – it’s an almighty beginning to the song, and it continues strongly from there with a foot-tappingly good doomy rhythm line and wonderfully heavy guitars. Truly a track to remember.
Another great inclusion is the Jenni Vartiainen cover. Vartiainen is a Finnish pop musician, so to hear a doom rendition of one of her songs is rather unexpected but nevertheless, something about it just works despite how different it is to the original, and it’s certainly a track that’s worth a closer look, whether you’re familiar with the original song or not!
To summarise, No Tears is a largely good listen and although it has its flaws, the high points outweigh them. Make sure you check this one out!
7/10
