Review by JD on April 25, 2010.

It has been said that there is such a fine line between creating some truly incredible music and playing pure shit while dressing it up to look good... that the secret is in how you use talent wisely. In quoting that little pearl of wisdom (author is unknown), I go on to review a Spanish band called Rise To Fall.

This foursome from Spain plays a sort of twist on a newer sort of breed Death Metal mixed with some shading of Nu-Metal subtle tendencies... all of which makes it as frantic as it is heavy. It does sounds like a good combination on the surface... but looks are sometimes very deceiving and leads you to expect more! What I got was almost a cheap attempt at metallic extremisms at its lackluster best.... good production can always hide that awful truths, but that is not the point here.

The album itself sounds damned good, but it really does hide the fact that Rise To Fall is pretty much an average sort of band with incredible recording values. Lyrically it is cliched while musically it comes across as predictable... the meat of the music is simply bland and offers up nothing but boredom. Sounding so good can help, but it does not fool the true metal fan for long. There is this amazing potential for showing talent that is hidden in the mediocrity, scads of it... but the oh-hum factor of the album nearly obscures it.

A little tweaking in the music itself and less time in production would help the band garner what it is working towards. As of now though, averageness makes it hard to get excited over the band and your left with wondering if you have listened to an album.

Categorical Rating Breakdown

Musicianship:6
Atmosphere: 5
Production: 9
Originality: 6
Overall: 5

Rating: 6.2 out of 10

Review by Michael on October 24, 2024.

With the fourth studio album German black-deathers The Spirit are leaving the cosmic void (at least album cover-wise) and instead of that, they move into a quite mystical cover with a god (maybe) on its front holding a moon in his hands praising their new album Songs Against Humanity. Besides, this one was created by Eliran Kantor who these days is one of the busiest and most popular cover art designers it seems.

Apart from the cover artwork changes, there are just slight nuances in the sound that the duo from the Saarland did here. Where Of Clarity and Galactic Structures were quite challenging in some parts when it came to the rhythmic sections, the songs here are more straightforward and not so bulky. The opener 'Against Humanity' for instance is a very catchy and accessible track with a lot of fury and hatred. Matthias' vocals are relentless and full of bitterness and with every single letter, he spits out some misanthropic feelings. They once started as some kind of Dissection worship, they are nowadays far away from this like Pluto being a real planet. Of course, the melodic approach is still caught in the songs but the stylistic direction went more to death and sometimes even doom and reminds strongly of the first Paradise Lost album like 'Room 101' which refers to George Orwells 1984 and is “is the basement torture chamber in the Ministry of Love, in which the Party attempts to subject a prisoner to their own worst nightmare, fear or phobia, with the objective of breaking down their final resistance” according to Wikipedia. Nice topic for songs against humanity, I would say. Here and there you still get the black metal vibes out of the music, like in 'Death Is My Salvation' which has some really cool epicness and a lot of Bathory vibes Quorthon spread in a song like “A Fine Day To Die” and might be some homage to them. Not only Bathory was some kind of blueprint here but also some more progressive death bands like Atheist or Obscura were surely some influential sources for the songwriting and V. Santura (ex-Dark Fortress, Tryptikon) contributed a guitar solo and some additional bass lines on that song, too. But mostly the songs are like rapid fire, just check 'Spectres Of Terror'. The drums are super thundering and the riffs cut like a piano wire through a harmless victim's throat. And again, over all this harsh music Matthias' rough vocals give the songs a certain flair.

What is remarkable is the length of some of the songs. Where their compositions on the previous albums had a running of maximum seven minutes, they now expanded the length to over eight minutes. And what makes it even more remarkable – you don't recognize that because the songs are smartly composed and there is nothing that might be cut off in the seven tracks.

The production is just like the previous ones executed very well-balanced and clear and I guess it isn't the biggest surprise that the already mentioned V. Santura engineered and mixed the album. Good job, man! But also from the main composer Matthias Trautes who was accompanied by a demon and was disrupted by agony during the writing process (according to the booklet).

Rating: 9 out of 10