Edenshade - The Lesson Betrayed

(28 May 2011)

There are some times when you write something, be it a review, a presentation, a song, a death threat, an essay, and it just doesn't seem to come together. There's something missing to it. The elements all there, but some sort of magic seems to be missing. You look at your work, and you say "I've just wasted fucking aeons on this crap?", before proceeding to throw a wooden chair at a wall and sitting down in emo position, meanwhile contemplating suicide. Yet, you can't realistically go back to square one and scrap everything you've done so far. It'll just have to do, and you feel mediocre and miserable. With The Lesson Betrayed, I get the impression that that's sort of what happened.

My first contact with Edenshade was in the form of "The Drop", and was I impressed! The song joined everything that was ever good about Alternative Metal with a pinch of Prog, and it sounded wonderful. What I later discovered was that the rest album was pretty much the same formula, and the result is disappointing. The Lesson Betrayed sounds alternately like the band are giving their best and like they just don't give a shit. Pretty much every song has at least one really good part, but every track also has at least one bad detail, which makes for a very frustrating listen. There is so much excellent stuff here! Why is it all mixed with crap that doesn't deserve a place in the album?!

Why do they have to make practically every single song in the album feature a structure of verses and choruses? Why is it always so easy to tell where the chorus is? Why do they also have to always have a guitar solo and a keyboard solo? WHY THE FUCK DO ALL THE KEYBOARD SOLOS SOUND THE SAME?! Speaking of "why the fuck", there are also completely misplaced piano parts and keyboard sounds in general, tempo changes that sometimes make no sense and sometimes are too predictable, an unnecessary "theme" chord porgression, and don't get me started on the spoken sections.

It's like Edenshade had started out with Not-so-Progressive Metal compositions, and then tried to justify their Progginess with elements that just don't fit the music. Admittedly, it would have been a REALLY boring sophomore without them, as it works both ways, but when the elements don't fit in, they stick out like a sore thumb with a sign on it reading "sore thumb". They tried to save the album, but it wasn't enough.

On the other end of the spectrum, we have all the good elements that were added to the album: There are the parts in Italian, which work surprisingly well, some pretty interesting work based around simple chord progressions, one fantastically organic, if not a little frustratingly unpredictable at times, production job that keeps you coming back for more, and some riffing that is at the same time headbangy and atmospheric.

What we're left with are two incredible songs, and a bunch of others that could be so much better but aren't. It is a mixture of unfulfilled potential and not very good ideas taken as far as they can go. It's still far better than the cover would suggest, though.

Standout tracks:

The Drop
Contemplate
As Water
Insect