(Season Of Mist)
Total Running Time: 43:28
NUMENOREAN is a five member band hailing from Calgary, Canada that was founded in 2011. The release of the groundbreaking “Sunbather” of DEAFHEAVEN in 2013, rose Blackgaze to prominence and influenced a great deal of new bands by expanding the blurry lines of the Black Metal genre. One of those bands were the Canadians that debutised with “Home” in 2016, a typical but well played Blackgaze release with a Depressive Black Metal vibe (reminiscent of the mighty WOODS OF DESOLATION), that caught the “ear” of Season of Mist that went on and signed them.
This year, with “Αdore”, an atmospheric concept creation (lost loves and the consequential existential quests), they present us an amalgam of Blackgaze, Progressive metal, Melodic Black passages and Post-Rock dynamics. After the impressive soundtrack-ish introductory “Νocebo”, NUMENOREAN deliver us a storm of anger, tear-jerking despair and furious melancholy with tracks like “Portraif of Pieces” and “Regret”, indicative of an intense progressive attitude, an intriguing newly inserted GOJIRA grooveness in guitars and an organic clean technical sound in percussion. Everything is colored emotionally by the special vocal range of Brandon Lemley (and some backing vocals by Roger LeBlanc a.k.a. Mr Broody Brood!!!!!!!!), that besides the classical screamo Black Metal shrieks (trademark of George Clarke of DEAFHEAVEN ), range from emotional melodic hardcore lines (reminding of TOUCHE AMORE’ and LA DISPUTE even KILLSWITCH ENGAGE of the first era) to Etherial Wave in some of the five intro,outro and interludes (I got vibes of ELEND and DECORYAH).
In the second half though, NUMENOREAN speed down and lose their momentum with two filler interludes-bridges (and the frivolous acoustic outro), by employing their vocal melodiousness to create moments of pretentious sentimentality. The flat, unnerving and with repetitive guitar themes (of the completed tracks) “Coma” does not help in the most tedious and forgetting part of the album. All is culminating in the multidimensional title track “Adore” that with its ENSLAVED-like riff underlines the better moments and more interesting ideas of the newly progressive oriented NUMENOREAN.
The forceful pretentious second half mitigates the furious melancholy of the first and deducts points from the Canadians but it does not strip them of their songwriting capabiltity, by exploiting their numerous influences, of delivering us in the future a more dense creation of focused emotional tension and targeted heights.
6,5/10
George Kolivanos
