Eyes of Fire

Featuring former Mindrot members, Eyes of Fire might be America’s answer to the European melancholia of bands like Katatonia and Lacrimas Profundere. In its softer moments Ashes to Embers has most in common with Rapture’s Songs for the Withering, but then it kicks comparisons in the teeth by breaking into strangely effective hardcore-style vocals, coming closer to Crowbar when they’re feeling their most doomy and dark. Eyes of Fire’s debut is truly an album of extremes, and though its approach to brutality may at times have more in common with early down-tuned nu-metal bands than the underground scene, when melancholy moodiness becomes the aim, Ashes to Embers is hauntingly moving and demands replaying into multiplicity.