Following more than five years as an
instrumental band, Jersey progressive-rock band Eternal Essence
releases their first LP featuring lead vocals, “A Light in the
Distance.”
Following more than five years as pure
instrumentalists, Jersey progressive-rock band Eternal Essence
releases their first LP featuring lead vocals, “A Light in the
Distance.” With guitars that sometimes tear and sometimes caress,
bass like a bulletproof suspension bridge, drums that cruise, groove,
and kick holes in walls, and a vocalist that soars above the ocean of
sound like a bird on the wing, Eternal Essence steps into the rock
foreground as if to say, “Oh, that? Yeah, we've been that awesome
for awhile now. Sorry to startle you.” It would seem that all of
a sudden, the East Coast indie scene has an obscene amount of awesome
to live up to.
Eternal Essence bills themselves as
progressive rock in the vein of Dream Theater, Rush, and Pink Floyd.
All the best qualities of these powerhouse bands are indeed present
in their music. However, fans of hardcore music will immediately
identify them with the high-octane sounds of the infant emo scene of
the early nineteen-nineties, when east coast bands like Quicksand,
and west coast groups like Farside (Revelation Records) were
forsaking the insipid, sappy whining of grunge performers to make
music that was heavy-hitting and honest, free of music-industry
pretentiousness. Eternal Essence is a return to everything that was
ever good about punk rock, all the expertise of heavy metal
instrumentation, and the exacting values of painstakingly
premeditated songwriting. In a word, E.E. is exactly what modern
music has, literally, been dying without.
Not unlike the Washington D.C. band
Ashes, they've taken on a female vocalist to front their carefully
measured wall of sound (Maria Vastano). Her voice never quite lilts,
never panders, never sounds dispassionate, like a statue of the
virgin Mary amidst a raging battlefield. She knows when to stand in
shadows, and when to strike for the kill. The guitars charge, they
race, they let chains of notes fall like Spanish classical music.
The bass, perfectly married to the kick drum, walks into melodies
with an effortlessness that can't help but ridicule what passes for
bass guitar on most radio stations today. The drums – ah, the
drums! – of Eternal Essence are their proverbial backbone, laying
back and providing support from behind, right up to the crucial
moment when they sharpen up to a staccato machine gun of head-rapping
ecstasy, firing volley after volley of beautiful violence, carefully
measured and white-knuckled in their triumphant lack of mercy.
Plenty of drummers idolize Neil Peart of Rush, but the Peart-like
percussion of Eternal Essence practices and does not preach.
There are crystalline keyboards,
clean-channel strings, crashing cymbals like toppling walls... But
the important thing is that the nation of music fans know: Eternal
Essence is here, and they have a new album.
-Sean McCauley
MondoTunes Staff Writer
The LP “A Light in the
Distance” is distributed globally by MondoTunes
(www.MondoTunes.com)
and is available at iTunes for convenient purchase and download
MondoTunes
(www.mondotunes.com)
supplies the largest music distribution in the world and provides
upstream services for many major labels in search of breakout
artists. While most independent distributors reach only 45-50
retailers despite charging needless monthly and yearly fees,
MondoTunes reaches over 750 retailers and mobile partners in over 100
world regions without any monthly or yearly fees.
ARTIST
CONTACT INFO:
Address – 607a north Victoria Ave.
Ventnor, NJ, 08406
Phone – 609-457-7014
eMail – eebandnet@gmail.com
website –
http://www.reverbnation.com/eternalessence
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