Review by Vinny for Flame, Dear Flame - Aegis (2021)

Flame, Dear Flame get advertised as “epic doom”, going as far as to describe themselves on their Bandcamp page as “monumental, crushing epic doom”. I don’t agree, for the record, but that is not me dismissing FDF as not being a good band. Their repertoire is varied enough to make Aegis interesting and at times unexpectedly gentle in fact. This gentleness is not just by virtue of the classical female vocals alone. Aegis is a very well-tempered musical experience. I will go as far as to say that whilst I acknowledge the impact of the vocals, I could cope without there being as much of them as there is. Their central position in the proceedings is certainly a solid enough anchor to weight your focus from, yet the guitars and percussion are subtly nuanced with heavy metal, traditional doom and an almost black metal shroud on at least one occasion.

It is clear to see why FDF have toured with the likes of Smoulder. However, I feel FDF are niche in terms of those vocals, which I am sure would have provided a great contrast to the more aggressive style of Sarah in the live setting. However, I am more a fan of the energy behind the vocals of say Sara Bianchin of Messa, a woman who has range and variety alongside an obvious yet never imposing presence. Like Messa, the guitar work in FDF is worth writing home about. David Kuri embraces the doom aesthetic probably best out of the band, stirring genuine melancholy in his melodies whilst equally able to assert weight in his riffs. Drummer, Jan Franzen puts in one of those performances whereby you do not necessarily notice him all the time, yet his spacing in the instrumentation is always perfect. Again, referring to the band’s bio on BC, they describe the drumming as “restrained” which is a great description.

Overall, for me at least, Aegis just potters around in the same space for too much of the album. Not that I want it in bucket loads, but there is no sense of dynamics. Just as my ears get pricked up by a suitably heavy riff, the album drifts away to a far too clean and eventually ordinary sounding place. I can’t deny the beauty of Maren Lemke’s voice but I just feel that it guides the direction of the album into an altogether too soft a space.