Fires in the Distance - Air Not Meant for Us (2023)^{Release ID: 44374}

I felt compelled to check out Air Not Meant for Us after it's opening track, Harbingers, appeared on June's Horde playlist and caught my attention. I'm glad I did too, because it is a release that adds a twist to a well-established metal trope. It is a combination of melodic death metal and death doom, which is not so unusual, but the twist is that the piano plays a prominent and integral part in the album's six tracks, to a degree I haven't had the pleasure of really hearing before. The result of this is that the melodocism is enhanced by the piano's refrains and it also often adds a wistfulness to the tracks with it's showers of gently tinkling notes falling upon the more solid and earthy doomy riffs.

The band prove themselves to be capable songwriters with the tracks being of perfect length to establish themselves and exhibit a degree of progression without falling into self-indulgence and becoming bloated. The riffs are melodic whilst still retaining a reasonable amount of hulking heaviness and there are one or two interesting solos. The vocals are fairly standard death growls and are handled perfectly capably without standing out as anything extra special. As a general comparison they kind of remind me of early My Dying Bride shorn of any of the gothic elements that the Yorkshiremen revelled in.

However, I am not really able to dish out the highest marks to Air Not Meant for Us because of the very things that I name above as being interesting. The melodicism and wistfulness that make it stand out from the crowd also makes the album feel a lot less threatening and ominous than I usually enjoy from the very best doomy death metal and so an upper echelon score is not going to happen. This is still, however, an interesting addition to the genre and is one that I thoroughly enjoyed discovering. It is a good album in it's own right, even if it maybe does fall just a little bit short. As a postscript, it does feature a voiceover sample of Christopher Hitchens, one of the smartest individuals I have ever heard speak, on the track, Idiopathic Despair, reassuringly telling us how death is nothing to fear even as he himself faced it.

While I do enjoy a lot of the death doom metal that I listen to, I rarely find myself actively going out of my way to listen to it. Part of this is undoubtedly my very strict method of weeing through new releases to keep myself from becoming overly swamped, but that typically means certain subgenres take a backseat. Fires in the Distance broke through as this record drew enough attention within days of release so I figured "Why not?" Besides, I haven't listened to a new release in the Fallen clan here on MA yet this year so here we go!

First and foremost, Fires in the Distance are fantastic songwriters. I was worried at first when the opener was the longest track on the album and was closing in on eleven minutes, but within the first handful of chords, I could tell that the runtime would not be a problem. The connectivity of the record is truly commendable as main melodies and motifs are constantly called back to and permutated into alternative variations. This proceeds into all three of this records "long" songs, including "Crumbling Pillars of a Tranquil Mind" and "Idiopathic Despair".

The mixing is a little imbalanced though. On the positive, the inclusion of the piano as a primary melodic instrument is so well executed and implemented on each track. It does create quite the unique sound for Fires in the Distance and pushes the timbre of the record ever so slightly to gothic, before the guitars return and bring this record back to the My Dying Bride-esque death doom. And the three part counterpoint that takes place between the vocals, piano and guitar lead is something that I rarely hear; most artists stop at only two distinct voices and when the do add a third voice, the balancing act is almost never pulled off well.

However, the record is brought down by the timbre of the rhythm guitar. And because this is a metal album, the rhythm guitar is heavily prominent in the mix throughout the record runtime. For this style of melodic doom metal, something about the overly tinny guitar timbre just forces quite a few sections of deep despair to not hit with the same gravitas or authority as it might have if this was a Swallow the Sun album for example. I can certainly let it slide when the guitar lead or piano's are in play and taking away from the fundamental, but it's still a timbre that persists and I cannot fully appreciate this album for what it is.

Air Not Meant for Us by Fires in the Distance is a solid enough of a death doom album in 2023 and gets a huge boost in score for the songwriting alone. But the hit and miss production keeps this flame in the distance instead of closer to my heart than I would like.

Best Songs: Harbingers, Crumbling Pillars of a Tranquill Mind, Psalm of the Merciless