Release date: 4th May 2018
Ember is the second album from post-black metal band Trautonist, and although it may not be the most interesting or immersive piece of work, it’s a decent enough listen.
There’s not much variety from song to song; the songwriting is all rather good and the haunting female vocals are especially good, but on a stylistic level it almost feels like Trautonist are presenting the listener with the same song over and over. Whilst it’s a good song, but ideally it would be better to have a little more variance over the course of the album.
Ember perhaps serves best as background music; there’s a good amount of ambience and atmosphere to it as a whole, but it’s just not quite strong enough to stand on its own two feet. It just doesn’t stand out from the crowd, as there’s no real hooks or memorable moments on the album, and it’s a shame because Trautonist definitely have the talent and ability to build on and expand the material featured over the course of Ember.
Don’t get me wrong – Ember isn’t an inherently bad album. It just feels that Trautonist can do better than this – Ember is good, but it’s just not the strongest of releases.
5/10
