#Into Eternity

[metalsongoftheday]

Thursday, May 8: Into Eternity, "Tides of Blood"

Rob Halford has been the gold standard among heavy metal singers for the last 50 years, but Stu Block apparently looked to Ripper Owens for reference as his vocals in Into Eternity’s “Tides of Blood” were WAY over the top to the point of distraction.  The music was largely Nevermore-esque intricate and crunchy power metal, and for the most part Block fit in well.  This came out as metal was increasingly fragmented as a genre, so “Tides of Blood” fit inside a very specific framework.

[mirkokosmos]

[vinylspinning]

Into Eternity: The Incurable Tragedy (2008)

I know people in this country are obsessed with medical shows -- E.R., House, Grey's Anatomy, The Good Doctor, all the way back to M.A.S.H. and General Hospital -- but this is ridiculous!

I'm referring to Into Eternity's The Incurable Tragedy: a concept album about cancer based on guitarist and chief songwriter Tim Roth's heartbreaking personal losses to that horrible disease, so we hereby send him our condolences.

When the album landed on my doorstep, some 15 years ago, I was quite an Into Eternity supporter, having watched them come of age, album (their self-titled debut arrived in '99) by album (Dead or Dreaming followed in '01) by album (Buried in Oblivion in '04), until they smacked a home-run with '06's excellent The Scattering of Ashes.

It was the last LP that introduced singer Stu Block, whose acrobatic range and multiple-personality-vocal-disorder proved a perfect match for Roth's hybrid musical vision, clashing progressive, power, death, and, err ... let's just call it screech metal!

But, for all their efforts, The Incurable Tragedy failed to measure up to Roth's grand conceptual ambitions, merely mirroring its predecessor with dimmer results and songs whose chaotic convulsions largely distracted from the whole before flat-lining to a finish.

Literally, as the sound of an E.K.G. wraps up the album and the last of three title tracks dated between September 21 and December 16, 2006; this after first cut, "Prelude to Woe," had set the stage with a faintly beating heart and mournful arpeggios.

In between these story-advancing efforts (there's also an interlude called "Symptoms" that's right out of Operation: Mindcrime), Into Eternity unleash a slew of schizophrenic head-bangers, including a couple of genuine winners in "Tides of Blood" and "Indignation."

Far more often, though, genre-mashing concoctions like "Spent Years of Regret," "Time Immemorial," and "A Black Light Ending" lose themselves in labyrinthine twists and turns -- intriguing at first brush, but lacking staying power, in the end.

I'll say one thing: Block's and Roth's vocal hysterics accurately convey the helpless fury and despair experienced by anyone who has coped with the "Big C," but they can't help The Incurable Tragedy escape the long shadow of its superior predecessor.

And neither could Into Eternity, as things turned out, when a series of personal and professional setbacks delayed work on new music and ultimately cost the band their deal with Century Media -- and that was before Block quit to join Iced Earth in 2011.

Even worse, the following years saw life imitating art (which in turn had imitated life ... and death), when two former band members succumbed to cancer, and, all of a sudden, a full decade passed before the group issued their sixth LP, The Sirens.

So, with this unhappy ending I'll wrap up this week of pink-ish vinyl here on VinylSpinning, and tomorrow we'll be back in black -- still the best color for vinyl, hands down.

More Into Eternity: The Scattering of Ashes.

[abby118]

I'll never get over this soundtrack.

[ex-mage]

My most listened to band in HS absolutely wasn’t a hardcore band from Manitoba no one has ever heard of.

It was a metal band for Saskatchewan, thank you very much.

mine would probs be: one direction, taylor swift, ed sheeran, the script and coldplay 

[regicidal-defenestration]

She would not fucking say that. Yes she said that in canon, but I perceive a greater truth unaffected by her writer's misogyny

[shandzii]

lady shmilk I always believed in u

[temporalreplicsimile]

🌈rice🌈

[mintaii]

drops them in a gothic horror au

[hansoeii]

only you.

[floatingtophats]

new crk update

[ouijeebies]

Arrived just to get shown up by lesbians 🤭

[cornysarthours]

If I had a nickel for every Beast Cookie that wanted their Ancient,,,

Bonus leaked cutscene from the Silent Salt Arc (Devsisters emailed it to me personally):

[huriita]

the bad ending the triumph of slop. (sloppy makeout)

[sunanthonyz]