End Of Green – The Painstream
13th August 2013
Band: end of green
Album: The Painstream
Record Label: Napalm Records
Release Date: 16 August 2013
Reviewed By: Mark Booth
TRACKS TO DOWNLOAD: āHangmanās Jokeā, āStandaloneā, āDe(ad)generationā
Well its been quiet on the western front for awhile and then BOOMā¦Iāve got a Napalm Record German invasion on my hands! Been given albums by Deadlock, End of Green, Powerwolf and Saltatio Mortis to review for you the lovely readers of AATR and my fans which I know there are many!!!
So first up is End of Green with their 8th album āThe Painstreamā.Ā Ā Now I will be honest and say that I had never even heard of End of GreenĀ orĀ that they released 7 albums previously and I wondered why. So with a little bit of digging on the band I found out why that might beā¦ To my horror I found out they were labelled as Gothic Metal! Ā Now I have nothing against Gothic Metal as I love a few Paradise Lost albums (although not heard their latest stuff) and I love theĀ My Dying Bride album āThe Angel and the Dark Riverā. However, nowadays Gothic Metal can mean bands like HIM, Evanescence, Lullacry, Marilyn Manson or were they going to sound more like earlier bands like Bauhaus, Fields of the Nephilim, The Sisters of Mercy etcā¦
So with trepidation I put End of Green āThe Painstreamā onto my iPod and pressed playā¦was it as bad as I thought? Well the album opens up with āHangmanās Jokeā and I must admit I was pleasantly surprised asĀ the song was actually more like Paradise Lost, Tiamat, Anathema and even a bit of Rotting Christ (circa A Dead Poem album but without the growled vocals). I think that the band arenāt as Gothic as the internet make out. Yes they have lyrics about loneliness, depression, pain, death, heartache etc but that doesnāt automatically make you Goth? I donāt like labelling bandsĀ beacuse if I like it I like itā¦doesnāt matter if its black, death, thrash, hardcore, punk, djent, goth, Viking etc. However I think if someone asked me to label End of Green I would say Dark Rock/Metal. The band like to call themselves āDepressed Subcoreā, which I will ask them about in my upcoming interview (see the website).
The album is 50 minutes of Heavy Dark Rock (almost Doom laden in parts), however a criticism I will make of the album is that it seems to get a little to weak towards the end. The last two songs on the album (Miss Misery & The Painstreet) might have been better if they were interspersed in the album. These are the slowest and more symphonic tracks on the album and seem to bleed into each other a little and I wish they had finished the album off with a dark explosion instead of a little whimper, but I donāt pick the track listing or order. The album is well produced and crisp and the vocals range from Paradise Lost (One Second era) and Anathema to a more bass tone like Pete Steele, will the music is a hybrid of Paradise Lost, Anathema, The Kovenant (in parts) with a dash of Type O Negative, Tiamat and Moonspell.
This album wont have you banging your head and pumping your fist or wanting to start a circle pit as that isnāt the aim. However if you want a slab of dark sombre metal then you could do a lot worse than checking out āThe Painstreamā and I will be looking into some of their previous albums as its always nice to have a variety on your iPod, CD Player etc. (The version I got to review didnāt include the bonus tracks so I cant comment on these).
SCORE ā 7/10
Track Listing:
01. Hangman’s Joke
02. Holidays In Hell
03. Standalone
04. Final Resistance
05. De(ad)generation
06. Home On Fire
07. Death Of The Weakender
08. Don’t Stop Killing Me
09. Chasing Ghosts
10. Miss Misery
11. The Painstreet