We start off with some mysterious sounds. Sounds that make me think of woods. Dark woods. It’s thundering, you have nowhere to go. Should you run? Or rather hide? Maybe just stay in the same place and wait for whatever that’s going to come. Maybe it’s not all bad. When the violin comes in, it seems rather peaceful all of a sudden. Maybe you’ve found your hiding spot, so you can wait until the storm is over. 

This, is the intro song ‘Mind Purifying Nature’ to German melodic death metal band Aeon of Awareness’ first album called ‘Dialogue With The Unconscious’. The first song already did such a good job of showing what instruments can do. Just sounds. No voice or image. Just you and the music. A very strong intro that is. 

Second song ‘Resignation‘ brings deep, long guitar strums by guitarist Per Lümbersson. Then the deep, growling voice of Meta List comes in. Sung in German, but with an English song title. I used the dictionary here for a proper understanding of the words. Resignation means the acceptance of something undesirable but inevitable. Which could be translated to life pretty much. The rough things you come across. You have to deal with shitty things in life, yet that’s part of life. But how well it goes, depends on how you deal with it. 

This correlates beautifully with the album title: ‘Dialoge With The Unconscious’. How are you dealing with life? Are you happy with the way you are dealing with it? Man, this album is getting me on the philosophic route. Just as I thought the song was finished, it wasn’t. After a long deep guitar strum, we get a clean guitar playing beautiful notes to finish the song. 

‘Fort Fortress‘ gave me some Amon Amarth vibes. This one is sung in English. Fast, high notes are strummed during the chorus. Through the verses there are long, deep strums again. This is a known style for death metal. Normally, I’m not a huge death metal fan, but the melodic parts in this album really got me into liking the genre. It’s not as dark as death metal usually is. This album has some light to it. 

‘De L’aube Des Temps’, or ‘From the Dawn of Time’ in English, is the closer of this EP. A French title, but sung in German. A very melodic song with very deep vocals. The breaks have these positive sounding guitar notes. The verses have the same deep vocals and low strumming guitars. Aeon Of Awareness really owns this style. Like I said before, normally I don’t like the fast and low tuned guitars and the dark vibes that death metal gives. But Aeon of Awareness created this melodic, positive vibe within death metal. This creates a whole different atmosphere.

The music makes you think. Everybody will experience different thoughts from the same music. But for me, it got me in a daze and made me think about life in general. Maybe the album title helped sending my thoughts in that direction, but the music definitely did too. Even though it’s already hard to understand lyrics of growling vocals, let alone if they are in another language, the words that are spoken are not the most important part I feel.  

With just under 20 minutes of music on this EP, I’m sad it’s already over. And this is just the first EP that Aeon of Awareness is releasing. It definitely sounds like they have years of experience on their sleeves. They gave the EP a full sound to it, meaning that their songs are ready to blast out of your speakers in full volume. Definitely recommended for fans of bands like Amon Amarth.

Album cover created by Charlotte Eleonore

Release date: April 24, 2021
Label: Self released
Tracklist:

1. Mind Purifying Nature
2. Resignation
3. Fort Fortress
4. De L’aube Des Temps