Gardens of Gehenna

Mortem Saluta

1997

Review by Vladimir Levin

"When the day and night become a union, become a single gloomy tone"

Gardens of Gehenna comes as breeze of fresh air in the midst of a trend among many of the better-known former doom-death and black metal bands to hybridize their music with techno and industrial elements - for example Tiamat, Moonspell, Cemetary (now defunct but reincarnated more or less in the form of Design 19) and Paradise Lost to mention a few. The result of such experiments is sometimes interesting, but it seems too often to rob the band of its true creativity, replacing it with a kind of shallow casting about for identity.

Gardens of Gehenna takes a vocal style of feathery growls, reminiscent of Amorphis circa Tales From The Thousand Lakes in its deliberate momentum and strong narrative sense, and combines it with a methodical pounding drum and regular crunching lead guitar similar in approach to the style of Candlemass. Finally, to round out the sound, Gardens of Gehenna weave eatheral muted synth harmonies about the core of their sound. Additionally, I would add older Edge of Sanity to the list of influences I detected in the music of Gardens of Gehenna.

Now, after so many allusions to other bands, I would like to stress that the music of Gardens of Gehenna is original-sounding and strong in its own right - it's certainly not any sort of pale imitation. Simply, making reference to other well-known bands is intended to help the reader to develop a clearer mental image of what the music is like, and to make up for the deficiencies of the author's powers of expression!

The overall feeling that emanates from Mortem Saluta, and is reinforced by the lyrics, is a sense of impending transformation or transmutation; the music evokes dark ethereal realms of cosmic proportion, cycles of birth and death, vengeance, and destiny. The lyrics are well-written and not excessively verbose. This clarity saves them from the tinny and mindless quality of many other metal bands' lyrics. The lyrics are haunting without becoming overbearing.

In spite of my comments in the first paragraph, the last track on this CD, a remix of the first track in German, mixes an industrial track into the song! However, the result is very interesting and well-done. Nevertheless, it was amusing to the author that this track began playing just as the first paragraph was being written!

This is an excellent and eminently listenable CD. I highly recommend it. Its greatest flaw is perhaps that it is slightly too short at just under 40 minutes. Nevertheless, the author is pleased to have been introduced to this delightful band and hopes you too will Gardens of Gehenna as enjoyable to listen to!

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