Mystery Of Death is the debut release from Fatalism. Billed as an ‘ethereal gloom band’, it’s certainly a unique description – and indeed, it’s quite a unique release.
Admittedly it’s not a release that immediately grabs you because the opener Isabelle feels like a jumbled mess of ideas that don’t quite blend together, with echoing vocals that don’t quite seem to fit with the instrumentation, so it perhaps isn’t the best of starts, but when second track Isolde kicks in, that’s when things get properly interesting. You’re instantly faced with this earworm of a driving riff that adds a good amount of atmosphere before the track gets fully underway. Where Isabelle fell short with the vocals, Isolde embraces them and the sparseness works well, proving that just because something doesn’t work for one thing doesn’t mean it won’t work for another. A particular highlight is the noodling and screeching guitars in the latter half of the song – nicely done!
Third track Isle is more of a haunting number that takes an ever-so-slightly more melodic route with the instrumentation and there’s some gloriously lush thicker sections which lend itself well to the song, before the listener is led into closer Gloom Reaper. The shortest track of the release by far, yet it somehow feels like Fatalism have all the time in the world as it progresses, and makes for a rewarding listen as a result.
An all-round great release, although it perhaps may have worked better with a different track to kick things off.
7/10
Fatalism: Facebook
