While Heaven Wept – Vast Oceans Lachrymose (2009)

While Heaven Wept is one of my favorite American bands since their Epic/Power Doom Metal is very different than other bands out there, and “Vast Oceans Lachrymose” is a worthy follow up to “Of Empires Forlorn”.

However “Vast Oceans Lachrymose” sounds much more like the continuation of “Of Empires Forlorn” since they both have plenty of similarities in their sound. If you like the band’s previous album then you will love this new one, but if you did not then this is the problem here, the band shows almost no musical evolution between them.

Don’t get me wrong, While Heaven Wept features very good musicians that can play almost any genre in Metal (and you can listen to this on this release), but the overall band’s sound feels like it’s stuck without moving forward. But they are still writing excellent songs, it’s just a matter of opinion, but I would like to see this band experiment more with their sound and add some more fresh elements into it.

The band’s atmospheric keyboard work is one of the best I’ve heard (since the band’s last release) and it’s provided by Michelle Loose (singer and keyboard player of Brave), the whole epic feeling that it has it’s just mesmerizing. Also the guitar work is stellar providing great solos courtesy of Tom Phillips and Scott Loose. The vocals on the other hand, I’m not a big fan of them, but by all standards they are good, I just don’t like how they sound with the band’s music. The bass guitar is very present in the mix and adds that extra punch to the music that many other bands lack.

Another thing I like is how the band transitions from a certain style in a song to a very different one in a matter of minutes, something that many bands fail miserably. The drum track to me is very interesting since it shows the wide variety of changes in the songs paces and between styles. The vocal harmonies are very good and in this album I even liked the vocals at some points, but they still feel weird to me.

“Vast Oceans Lachrymose” features a wide variety of genres combined into a 6 song 43 minutes opus. The band excels at combining genres and creating very Epic songs that feature great musicianship and song writing abilities, but sometimes they feel a bit too complex for the average listener. The combination of genres might be misunderstood by purist of a certain particular genre. However, if you like a wide variety of Metal music and epically long songs then this album will be one of the best discoveries you make this year.

Release: November 3, 2009

Country: USA