Immortal Remains – Everlasting Night

This doesn’t look promising! Another cheap looking cover with an indecipherable logo showing what it looks to be an inverted cross. And truth be told, it only takes me a few minutes of listening to ‘Everlasting Night’ to realize that Immortal Remains don’t make a positive impression with their music either.
Hailing from Germany, Immortal Remains peddle a rather muted and dated symphonic black-metal style that for the most part reminds me of Cradle of Filth and Hecate Enthroned. The quintet however, likes to call it dramatic black-metal. Whatever the hell that is, the only drama I’ve experienced was the fact that I had to listen to it for four consecutive times in order to come up with a fair judgement of the band’s debut full-length record.
If the dramatic side of their music goes down to the more ambient and symphonic sections of ‘Everlasting Night’ largely created with the use of keyboards, then they miserably fail to conjure up any sense of drama. Don’t expect the keyboards to evoke that grandiose and almost cinematic feel of Cradle of Filth since the synthesizers sound deceptively simplistic, going aaahhhhhhh and then oooohhhhh for most of the times.
For a taste of good black-metal made in Germany tryout Secrets of the Moon and Anael instead. (4/10)

David Alexandre

Band info: www.myspace.com/immortalremainsmetal
Label info: www.mykingdommusic.net