Review: Prayer for Cleansing

Prayer for Cleansing
““The Rain In Endless Fall””
(Tribunal)

The already (and now twice) defunct PFC are a rather odd sounding Pennsylvania act that gleams influences from all over metal’s family tree.  While heavily rooted in hard-core, straight edge, and veganism, The Rain In Endless Fall cannot be written off as a one trick pony.  The majority of the time they oscillate somewhere between hard-core and thrash, PFC isn’’t afraid to bring together some elements that at times would seems contradictory.  “A Dead Soul Born”  was slow death metal, with growled lyrics, choice!  “Chalice of Repentance” tares open with all the fury and noise of black metal, and shifts gears and slows down in to a grove.  The opening to the album took me back to the intro. to Metallica’s …And Justice For All, the most clear cut thrash moment of all, which gets reproduced again and again.  There were a few short beat blasts to warm the grinding side, but mostly the speed was implied by blazing dueling guitars.  Which there were a lot of, too much I think.  The sort of thing that works better for an 80’s sound, but tends to be less abrasive then typical for “heavy” music.  It certainly was trying hard to do something out there experimental, but unfortunately, as often as they succeeded in creating something brilliant and complex, they fell short.  When things didn’’t gel together, which happened slightly more then excusable.  “Bael Na Mblath” (Mouth of flowers), was almost dismal at times, trying to hard to make fast heavy distortion go with slow clean acoustic.  Almost, but not quite there, could have used some more studio time to help bring it all together.