DEATHWHITE: Grave Image (GOTHIC METAL): review / opinion to read on Music Waves

If you can't wait for Katatonia's new album ("City Burials" is announced for April) or if you're looking for the sound companion of your nights to ruminate your spleen, then we can't advise you too much to throw yourself on "Grave Image", the second offering (without counting two EPs to get your hands on) of Deathwhite. The Americans don't hide at all their influences that they claim on the contrary. Pale visuals, plaintive vocals, the same way of making the guitars vibrate and even the mastering, left to Dan Swano, remind Katatonia.

This proximity could be disabling if not invasive and it's true that it seems quite difficult to tear oneself away from the memories of "Discouraged One" and "Tonight's Decision" listening to the successor of "For A Black Tomorrow" but these Americans hiding under the initials of anonymity are not stingy in very good ideas, gifted as they are to weave melodies numbed by despair and simply compose excellent compositions. All these qualities allow them not to be reduced to the rank of banal copy.

The first thing that strikes you is the beauty of the vocal lines of LM, a singer without a name and also a guitarist. With a timbre full of pain, the man slips into the skin of the most melancholy Jonas Renkse, as witnessed by the heart-rending 'No Horizon' or the terminal 'Return To Silence', which is also sheared off by heady chords that Anders Nyström wouldn't deny. No need to resort to cavernous voices to spread a contrite ether like a shroud of despair, the trio makes do with those melodies whose supplicant strength gives one a dark shiver.

Poaching also in the land of November, Anathema or even Novembers Doom, Deathwhite occupies the place left vacant by Daylight Dies, shaping a gothic doom with melodies as bleak as they are bewitching. The Americans offer a collection of ten impeccable complaints, chiseled like goldsmith's pieces. Dark gems, the 'Funeral Ground', 'Among Us' and 'Words Of Dead Men'' form the grains of an emotional rosary imprinting indelible stigmata on the skin.

Better than a simple Katatonia clone, Deathwhite imposes itself above all with "Grave Image" as the great purveyor of a waxy and desolate gothic doom that invites introspection as much as depression. - Official website

DEATHWHITE

GRAVE IMAGE

SEASON OF MIST

GOTHIC METAL