One can achieve a great deal with a cello. Just ask Dead To A Dying World, a Texan troupe whose main line of work is a sound which melds Black Metal, Doom Metal, and Prog Rock. This seems to have found an audience of sorts – as they are now onto their third album, Elegy (Profound Lore Records).

This is, in fact, sumptuously put together. The disparate elements of the music don’t clash. In fact, the way the desolate shrieks, the heavy and treble-ravaged riffs, and the strum of the strings are structured is a nice balance of elements which could, in fairness, have ended up sounding like a mess. Instead, Elegy sits in the Goldilocks Zone of its contrasts, snug and at ease with a coherent and unified sound.

At its best, the album has a clear, resonant quality, haunting, soothing and ravaging the ear as the band takes us on a long, varied musical journey. The dual cello and guitar attack on ‘Empty Hands, Hollow Hymns’ is a case in point, and the band keeps on repeating that trick to good effect, here and there, throughout the record.

So why isn’t this album blessed with a higher score? Sad but true, Elegy fires beautifully crafted arrows out of a handsomely wrought bow, but not only keeps missing the target but occasionally takes out squirrels in a nearby tree. This is a roundabout way of saying that Elegy has everything required to be a classic, but for the fact that it never quite hits the right note at the right time, and never quite translates that potential into a truly epic moment.

The sad thing is not that the music couldn’t do this, but rather, it keeps threatening to, and doesn’t. Strip away the good bits, and what remains is an odd mix of disappointment – and frustration.

6 / 10

ALEXANDER HAY