Reviews list for Frayle - 1692 (2020)

Frayle's debut full-length album comes two years after the four-track The White Witch EP introduced the band to metal audiences worldwide. That ep's inclusion of a Portishead cover may have given some early indication of the direction the band wanted to go in.
The album starts off in pretty good shape, after a short intro, with the title track, 1692. It's riffs are huge, slow and cavernous as a marked contrast to Gwyn Strang's light and ethereal vocal style and this is a belter of a track. God of No Faith, however, seems a bit misguided in it's use of melo-death vocals which sound horribly out of place here, in what is otherwise a strong track. The rest of the album is pretty good, varying from hulking doom to trip-hop influenced Doomgaze of a kind that may be an attempt to woo a wider audience to the band's sound.
Overall, despite a couple of issues such as the aforementioned God of No Faith and the fact that Gwyn Strang's vocals are sometimes a little too sweet-sounding, I would hail the album a success and a bit of a step up from the EP.