Weeping Birth - A Painting of Raven and Rape CD Review

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2004-05-14 : Don
Epic! Amazing! This album is simply remarkable. Primarily, it's very Death Metal, but it has some Black Elements to it, as well as influences from other sources. Great guitarwork and a variety of vocals are all throughout the album, ranging from deep, death growls, clean and almost spoken vocals, clean-but-singing vocals, high growls similar to Black Metal, etc. The songs contain a lot of variety, some are very fast and heavy, while others are a bit slower at times. Some piano/synth parts are throughout the album, as well as some great melodies. If you're a fan of the Death genre, then this Brutal Black Death release is one for you.

Vladimir Cochet is also known for his bands Mirrorthrone and Unholy Matrimony (as well as two others which have no CDs out currently).
2003-11-05 : Blackwinged : Link
Weeping Birth - A Painting of Raven and Rape
Self Released - 2003
Website - http://www.weepingbirth.com

MARK: 10 / 10


Weeping Birth is a solo band from Switzerland spearheaded by Vladimir Cochet. Some of you may know Vladimir since he has four other solo projects, but chances are you won’t. Weeping Birth plays extremely brutal death metal mixed with the sound of symphonic black metal, which forms together a very unique sound that I’ve never heard before. Weeping Birth was first conceived back in 1999 as a two-piece and a demo was recorded. In 2000 Vladimir parted ways with bassist Lionel and this album was wrote and recorded by just Vladimir, but not released and Weeping Birth was put on ice (I guess). Since this time Vladimir has created several other solo projects and now finally three years later Weeping Birth’s debut album sees life.

The thing I truly admire about this album is that there’s so much variety present. Most of the time the music reaches speeds of insane fury whilst at other times can be slow and gloomy or even a little epic occasionally. The same goes for the vocals since they appear in the form of low death growls, grim black metal, spoken, and clean style vocals. The death metal vocals are the most frequent style, yet they remain interesting and very hateful throughout the entire recording. The spoken & clean vocals are done rather well and have a strange mysterious feeling to them.

The drums are performed via a drum machine and while you can easily tell they are programmed they have a metallic/industrial like feeling to them. The drums also have an epic feeling on several tracks on this album thus once again proving the large amount of diversity this album holds. The keyboards often have that Dimmu Borgir symphonic style to them but they also have a sound that’s reminiscent of early Emperor or Gehenna. The guitar playing is often times hard to hear due to the vocals, drums, and keyboards being more audible, but when they are present you’ll be hearing some excellent guitar playing. As for favorite’s it’s almost unfeasible to mention any single song since there all very, very good, but since this is a review I’ll simply say track three ‘The Mental Bloodtide’ is the brightest spot on the record for me.

In addition the artwork is another high point of this release. Yes you guessed it Vladimir even did the artwork. He has his own web design company called Weeping Web, which makes websites, logos, and album artwork.

If for some reason all of this is not convincing you then all I can say is this album simply kicked my ass and had me screaming all the way to hell! It really is a shame that this albums release took three years because Vladimir has created something brilliant here. http://www.weepingbirth.com