Silentium - Seducia

*=Staff's pick	Hangmans Lullaby Serpentized Dead Silent Unbroken Frostnight Children Of Chaos* Empress Of The Dark* Seducia

Genre	Symphonic Metal	Riina Rinkinen	Vocals
Tracks	8	Toni Lahtinen	Guitar
Runningtime	49 Min.	Juha Lehtioksa	Guitar
Label	DAR	Matti Aikio	Bass
Release	27 Jan. 2006	Jari Ojala	Drums
Country	Finland	Sami Boman	Keyboards
Similar artists	---

The story of Silentium goes back to December 1995 from the ashes of a death/gothic metal band called Funeral. After several line up changes done within the passed years Silentium have finally founded their way of atmospheric metal with what I would call almost classical influences. Silentiums sound builds much on massive and dramatic compositions which include keyboards and the use of a quite magnificent cello.

As you might have guessed we are quite far from german beer halls and drunken self claimed thrash metal experts. Silentium sound to come from a civilized part of this planet, even if we talk Finland in this case... The music presented on their latest opus Seducia is so sophisticated and clean from all forms of aggression and malicious behaviours that its almost scary. Yet it is still dramatic, almost movie influenced song structures at sometimes. Good production, good vocals from Riina Rinkinen and good feeling for melodies.

I think that there are more positive aspects to find if we start to lift up and look at each piece in this sound puzzle. But I wonder if the meaning mustn't be to have a whole picture to consider? The point is that the whole picture of this work doesn't convince me. There are some pearls like the Children Of Chaos song, a good one. The same with the Empress Of The Dark with its cool gypsy feeling. But that's all. I have serious problems to be interested and to be amused by all these sounds. I wonder were the metal went? Theatrical melodies with half hard, half lame riffs are combined in a way that doesn't speak to me. Not at all.

Mentioned songs are ok and the vocals from booth Riina and the backing ones from Matti Aikio work well but overall I think that Silentium would gain more on adding more metal to their music. I can think of people that will raise this to the skies cause the technical diversity or whatever, but I'm longing for some dirt under my nails and some real metal.

Production	Vocals	Compositions
7	5	4

Summary
4 chalices of 10 - Tim