Chasm, The - From the Lost Years... (1996)^{Release ID: 2501}

Two years beforehand, The Chasm released a fairtly impressive debut which had a little trouble balancing the death and doom atmospheres together, but still provided a sense of entertainment. We get much of the same on the follow-up, From the Lost Years, with its own strengths and weaknesses. The consensus is that this album is an improvement, but I'm not so sure.

I was not really impressed with the opener, The Gravefields. One of the major riffs was just going, nuh-NUH nuh-NUH nuh-NUH nuh-NUH, and it almost got annoying. Secret Wings of Temptation was a step in the right direction with a successfully progressive structure, and the doom elements were improved on as well, being a more serious piece of music rather than a simple genre-track opener. After these first two tracks, however, the focus of the balance between the album's three major elements is cranked up to 10, and the production flaws are largely made up for. However, since these songs are so long, they run the risk of getting boring. Once the balance kicks in, there are very few surprises left.

And... that's all I really have to say about it. If you're a huge death metal fan, then I imagine the fairly progressive structure should be enough to satisfy you for the 70-minute runtime. But in my honest opinion, this should've been cut to about half of it's length, because there are some real strengths of the album that improve on the debut, but thanks to drawing the songs out these improvements hardly matter.