The Pax Cecilia - Blessed Are the Bonds [2007 Post-Rock/Metal] The album sounds sort of like Isis, Opeth, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, and a bunch of other stuff, but those are the ones I'm reminded of most. The vocals on this album are usually either delicate soft vocals that sound very quiet or loud screams, and sometimes he goes in between. They're pretty good (I'm not huge on the screams really), but they're kind of rare on this album. Most of the time the music is instrumental. The instrumentation is great, featuring some amazing piano stuff, some strings, a trombone, and your regular rock instruments. I like the drumming on this album. The guitar work is nice but the tone is somewhat crappy. There is a very nice flow on this album. Almost all of the tracks blend into one another in some way but they're distinct enough to tell apart. The Wasteland is an ambient peice that I find very pretty and enjoy quite a bit. The Tragedy is a great opener, I love it. The Water Song and The Tree are the highlights, in my opinion. As for the weak spots, I'd say The Machine is the crummiest track on here, and The Hymn has a fadeout that takes way the hell to long to, you know, fade out. I don't know if that's really such a bad thing... This album has some really nice artwork. It comes in a digipack with this poster thing, and of course it has a booklet. It looks like charcoal drawings or something. Anyway, it's really cool. Especially for a free album, you'd think this would be expensive for them. So in conclusion, this is a really cool album. 4.5/5
Found this album in my CD stack last week. Pretty good, but only a few songs might be considered "post-metal". Still, a good album.
Review wasn't very good, but the album is awesome. This has NOTHING of Isis, Opeth, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, you should clean your ears. I also don't know why hating screams when they fit the music. I mean, doesn't Isis and Opeth have something like that?
Yeah I'm pretty shit at writing, I really don't know why I even wrote this. Anyway, when I wrote this I didn't listen to very much besides prog rock/metal so I guess that's why I was comparing them to random shit. As for my comment on his screams, I just didn't care for his style at that time. I sure as hell do now.
It's a fantastic album, and I still can't believe it was all packaged so nicely etc for a free album. Still up for free download on www.thepaxcecilia.com, they stopped the CD ages ago though I think. This band ever do anything else?
just think of how many copies of this album the band had to pay for just so RYMers could tick "owned" and never listen to it twice
Good album, the piano and strings are a nice touch. Usually that kind of instrumentation in this breed of music seems forced, but Pax Cecilia pull it off.
