While Heaven Wept Suspended at Aphelion Review

Virginian Doom Metal band, While Heaven Wept, create passionate music that is a league of its own.  The band mixes classical styles with modern progressive music to make incredibly ethereal music.  Their last record “Fear of Infinity” was an explosive Power album that contained jam after jam, threading passion through each and every line, weaving brilliance as each track was produced.  This album is rivaled with Arjen Lucassen’s Star One and any Dream Theater album released in recent years.  After “Fear of Infinity” and earlier work “Vast Oceans Lachrymose”, While Heaven Wept was posed with the task of creating a new, more moving, more mind blowing album.  This task was vastly completed with their 2014 album, Suspended At Aphelion.

 

Upon first listen to While Heaven Wept’s new album, you are opened up to a number of transcending sounds throughout each track.  From the moving and saddened strings, to the powerful and smooth delivered vocal lines, to the slow building guitars and drums, this album can only be described as a masterpiece.  The intro track Introspectus is a classical movement, strings and classical acoustic guitar bringing a feel reminiscent of Greensleeves.  The album then drops into the Power and Doom Metal mix with partner tracks Icarus and I and Ardor.  The two tracks are brilliantly melded and crafted together, with a slow building delivery much like a soundtrack to a Medieval movie.  Icarus and I also mixes growling with powerful vocals, mixing perfectly to prove this band isn’t just another Prog band.  Ardor is more moving and theatrical compared to its sister track, bursting with emotion and passion.  Heartburst is an even more moving track, with a slow building piano melody building on top of light synth, all highlighting the soft and deepened vocals.  The build up into the dueling vocals and neoclassical guitar solo is absolutely brilliant and captivating on this track.  This song definitely gives the feel I expected with a new While Heaven Wept album: dark, gloomy, saddened, and uplifted all at the same time.

 

“Suspended At Aphelion” does pick up into the Doom Metal side with the faster jamming track Indifference Turned To Paralysis.  The bass line on this track is technical and played with fast precision, adding a new layer to the sound on this album.  As a bassist, I applaud any band who makes the bass a stand out instrument on albums.  The three part epic track The Memory of Bleeding/ Souls in Permafrost/ Searching the Stars is layered with four thousand different sounds and feelings, without becoming overwhelming and confusing.  The vocals are really unique on this three part epic, containing perfectly harmonized vocals from two well versed vocalists.  This song is particularly catchy and interesting because of the changing tempo coming from the drums, adding even more layers of the music.  Every band has layers, but no one flows through the layers like While Heaven Wept.  Each layer sounds carefully crafted and inspired by this harmony the band always achieves on every album.  Reminiscent of Strangers / Lifelines Lost is evidence of the layers with a slow piano ballad beginning, building into brilliant guitar work with excellent soloing one after another., leading into soft group sung vocals. Restrospectus is an album closer with trademarked strings, leaving you with a feeling of melancholy, yet hope.  It is a perfect way to wrap up this short but beautiful album.

 

The passion, artistry, writing, and well thought out instrumentation and vocal melodies that were put into “Suspended At Aphelion” make it a masterpiece of an album.

 

Album Rating 8/10