A one man project, with lost of talent, lost of ideas but few “reasonable” tactics on how to put them all together and make them fit (it sounds extremely familiar… I think I had the same opinion or “analysis” about the Light? album last week).
Tears of Mankind is Phillip Skobelin solo project, he plays every single instrument on this debut record as well as all the vocals, and that’s perhaps the problem, as any other complicated and misguided mind this record has no top or bottom, even the way the tracks are organized is discouraging, a clear example is the third track “Deep Inside the Silence” a long track of more than 12 minutes that rides a doom theme but tries in a couple of occasions to sound a bit friendlier by introducing melodic, easy to catch riffs that don’t go anywhere or help the song develop, and after those 12 minutes if you survived you are already tiered of trying to “get” what this guy is doing.
Without Ray of Hope is mainly created on a melodic doom based but flirts with the idea of introducing some death growls a perfect example is the second song “Eternal Sadness” and a couple of “easy listening” gothic tunes in some other songs.
The album has some good songs, some very good songs, very well structure, played and presented, but the ones that really stand out are the ones that hurt the record sadly, like I was saying previously, “Deep Inside the Silence” is not just long, and boring it has some of the worst vocals on the entire album… really a deadly song for the album.
But enough of the bad songs, From Dark to Light is one of those tracks that show just how good this guy can be when he manages to follow a train of thought and stick to it, from deep death growls, to Goth atmospheres the song has a nice sound but a terrible clean vocal segment, nonetheless the track gives a sort of hope for his future endeavors.
