Heaven Grey – Falling Mist (2010)

Hailing from Latvia, today we get a very impressive Doom/Gothic Metal self-released album with Heaven Grey’s “Falling Mist”. We are suckers for Doom/Gothic Metal and everything in between, but when the genres are combined we get even more excited. Heaven Grey had most of the ‘activity’ in the late nineties, and because of line-up issues split-up in 2000. Recently reformed the band set up to record “Falling Mist”, their second full-length and one of the best Doom/Gothic Metal albums we have heard this year.

Combining lyrics in both English and Latvia, the band sets up a very bleak and depressive atmosphere with their music. We particularly love the language combination since it’s very nice to hear bands embracing their own language when it comes to writing songs. The music is very bare-bones and does not require anything fancy to make it excellent. Mainly driven by the weeping guitar work and depressive clean vocals, Heaven Grey’s music is right up there with As Divine Grace, Thorns of The Carrion, Castle, etc. when it comes to creating depressive music that will keep you engaged for the duration of the full-album.

As we mentioned before all vocals are clean and are very melancholic, and they create the perfect atmosphere needed for this kind of release. With 4 songs in Latvian, the switch between English sounds very interesting giving this band a more original feeling than other bands that only sing in English. There are some female operatic vocals in “Falling Mist”, providing an interesting change of pace from the male vocals.

The keyboards are the second element that help Heaven Grey create the depressive atmosphere we love about “Falling Mist”. They are very well crafted and while repetitive at some points, they get the job done very well and complementing the music magically. The drumming is top notch and keeps the tempo right up to the standards of the genre.

The guitar riffs are simple and yet very diverse through the album, the solo parts give that extra ‘weeping’ sound to the music that is much needed these days when bands of this genre are focusing on more simple rock-based guitar structures in music of this kind. The bass guitar line is very elaborate and very noticeable; this in part is aided by the crystal-clear mix. The song structures are not the most complicated ones in the world, but they are very catchy and transmit emotions very well.

Being inactive for many years, Heaven Grey still has the peculiar sound that Gothic/Doom Metal bands had back in the late 90’s. And this ‘retro’ sound is one of the many things we love about this band since it’s something we don’t get to hear very often in new releases.

If you are looking for a very solid and effective Doom/Gothic Metal release you will love “Falling Mist”, since the band has captured a timeless sound that is rare these days. We hope that this band stays together and does not evolve too much into the current Gothic Metal sound that many of our old favorite bands evolved into. “Falling Mist” is definitely one of the best releases of this genre that we heard in quite a few years, so be sure to check them out and order this album from their Myspace page.

Release: June 18th, 2010

Country: Latvia