Seraph In Travail "A Black Death Incense" <REVIEW>

March 20, 2021 Tom McKay

“…a blob of pounding symphonies with technical proficiency but has a cloning problem”

Yes! It’s true, I found the guy REALLY responsible for your problems. Since I found him and took that lovely picture, I’ve felt a bit weird. Almost like I shouldn’t have gone near him… but I’m sure it’s nothing, because if it is something it means I have to vaccinate myself and let Bill Gates IN!!

Anyways, Seraph In Travail is a symphonic death metal band from Philadelphia, USA. Home to the Flyers, alcoholism and only the second best food item to ever exist. I’m sorry, but cheesesteaks are just sandwiches pretending to not be poutine. They’re sandwich poutines!!! Change my mind! (I can’t wait to read the Philly fanboy tweets from this one.)

Complete side note, when I was writing this review, I couldn’t find where they were from, so I had to ask Curtis of Dewar PR and he’s like “They’re from Philly dawg” and I was like “Okay thanks, it doesn’t say on any of their socials so far” and he’s like “The hell? I thought it was on there” and while that was happening I checked the website where it blatantly says “Philadelphia Symphonic Death Metal” while simultaneously forgetting one of the L’s in their name at which point I informed him about my discovery and (having the email press kit open) finally saw in plain text “Philly symphonic death metal outfit Seraph in Travail”… Long story short, I question why the hell y’all watch me. I’m an idiot.

Anyways, symphonic death metal band, have been around since 2008, and after years of scrapped demos, local shows, hating New York and changing lineups, they released their first album in 2015 Bring Forth Death, following that up with a re-release and a sophomore album in 2019. But now in 2021, we’ve got their 3rd album A Black Death Incense, an album that is said to pursue “an austere mastery of the art of dark music at the expense of any scene trend or genre convention”. Gotta love press kits, they always make their album sound way hype and in some cases, you get the musical equivalent to the recent Tom & Jerry movie. But is this album different from that stigma? Well let’s not waste any more time, and let’s get straight into it.

So we begin with the album with the power of anime on “Fixed And Dilated” as the instruments plow their way into our ears with huge sounding metal guitars from Dan Shegue, the relentless blast beats of Mike Shaw, and the electronic sound of the symphonies. The entirety of the song features the staples you would expect from symphonic metal. Strings coat the track while a choir belting (presumably) latin phrases is littered in various places. Once the vocals of Jonathan Sutherland officially come in for the verses… I gotta say, I should’ve expected clean vocals. I know it says Seraph In Travail is a death metal band, but the symphonic part should’ve been the first clue. Not unwelcome by any means, especially since his growls and screams still hold their own very well. In fact, I’d say I’m more of a fan of his screams than I am his cleans. It could just be me, but I feel like his clean vocal style feels a bit forced in my opinion. But I digress.

So that was a good look into what we’ve to expect, do we continue that expectation onward? Yes we do! Getting into “My Bitter End” shows me that there’s still some epic darkness to endure, though I fee like this song is way more straight forward than the previous song. “My Bitter End” feels more like a concert anthem than it does a chaotic death metal song like before. Not a bad thing mind, but it’s interesting that we go to straight forward pretty quickly in the album. Don’t worry though, it doesn’t last long as “When They Crown You Queen” seems to go back to the heavy death metal style they were doing before, though I must admit, I’m feeling like things are beginning to blend together a bit. It’s not a “Black Death Smoothie” yet, but if something new doesn’t happen before the album is over, then we will have that issue.

Moving on to “In Hemorrhagic Hues”, not a lot changes at first listen. It has dynamic ranges that feature some great metal instrumentation and pulse pounding death metal parts alongside some softer symphonic based sections, but that can also be said for the previous songs as well. And despite the different melodies, not a whole lot has changed. Same thing can be said about “Dead Scream Kill” and “For The Wrath of Dying Days”. At this point in A Black Death Incense, it’s all blending together, and I’m beginning to question if there was an end to any of these songs at all, or if this album is just one REEEEAAALLLLY long song. But there’s still 2 more songs, is there anything new to look forward to? … no. no there isn’t. Now don’t get me wrong, there’s still a lot to love about “The Apostate Coil” and “Across Bloody Waters”, especially if symphonic death metal is something you’re into. But if you’re trying to listen to them after the first 6 tracks without stopping, there’s nothing really peaking to remind you “Oh hey! This is an album!”.

And I think that’s the key thing here. While the elements for each song are great combined, and there’s massive talent between each member of this group, each song put together doesn’t work as an album. Each song on their own work, but they’re all so similar to each other that it’s practically pointless to have 8 songs that feel like one song. Again, compositionally each song is great and there’s talent to be had here. But Seraph in Travail is what many critics would call a “Song Band”. They have great “songs”, but there’s no point on playing through the whole album in one go. Even then, each song on A Black Death Incense sounds so similar to each other, that picking one out of the rest to showcase is the equivalent to picking my favourite McDonalds Big Mac variant. It’s all the same! Same sauce, only difference is the patty amount.

So while I’m tempted to give a glowing reccomendation based on the skill level of the musicians of Seraph in Travail, I’m here to review an album. And overall, as an album A Black Death Incense is a blob of pounding symphonies with technical proficiency but has a cloning problem. For real, at least COVID has different variants, why couldn’t A Black Death Incense have that? While each song has a lot to admire on their own merits, I would hesitate to recommend the whole album as a full listen. I would say if you like Symphonic Death Metal, you could do WAY worse. The guys of SIT are clearly proficient and understanding of the classical genre, but it’s hard to say if it’s “an austere mastery of the art of dark music”.