Failing to Move out of the Shadows - A Review of The Foreshadowing's New Wave Order

New Wave Order is the fifth full length studio effort by Italian doom and gothic metal quartet The Foreshadowing. This record comes around one year after the release of the quartet's overlooked extended play Forsaken Songs and a whopping eight and a half years after previous full length release Seven Heads, Ten Horns. I have been following this band for about a decade now and I initially believed that this quartet could become the next big doom metal and gothic metal group. The band however has lost almost all of its momentum due to a lack of concerts, festival appearances and record releases. New Wave Order is overall not strong enough to help the quartet get off that downward spiral but at least the small number of genuinely dedicated fans should be relieved to listen to this sonic sign of life. New Wave Order includes nine new songs and clocks in at a perfect fifty minutes as it delivers overall good to very good genre music without any significant experiments or surprises.

The band's sound hasn't changed much in the past eight and a half years. The slow, melancholic and low vocals still sound charismatic, enchanting and soothing. The mid-to slow-paced melodic guitar play values atmosphere over technique. The use of keyboards, saxophones and synthesizers add some much-needed diversity and ultimately save this output from being forgettable. The bass guitar play is serviveable at best and the drum play certainly isn't as domineering as it was one records such as Oionos one and a half decades ago. The mellow, smooth and timeless production blends in fittingly.

The song material needs several spins to grow upon old fans and new listeners alike. While this might be typical for the aforementioned genres, The Foreshadowing's previous record always included songs that impressed right from the start and managed to stay on the minds of the listeners. The songwriting on New Wave Order has much depth but isn't as efficient as on past releases. Only calm, introspective and patient listeners will end up growing fond of this output.

The atmospheric backing choirs and dreamy synthesizer sounds on "Our Nightmares Call" for instance are going to be growing upon listeners after a few spins. "Heraclitus" on the other side features catchy melodies recalling psychedelic rock influences of the seventies and even new age segments from the eighties that sound puzzling at first contact but also grow as time goes by and make this song the record's hidden gem. "Bound for Ruin" is a song with airy keyboard sounds, catchy vocal lines and dynamic drum patterns that make an overall mid-paced tune almost a dynamic album highlight that could please to a wider audience and should be an obvious single candidate in my book. If you like atmospheric doom metal of epic proportions that would fit splendidly upon the soundtrack of an independent horror video game, you should give closing tune "Vox Dei" a few spins as it has the highest potential to grow upon listeners in the long run.

At the end of the day, The Foreshadowing's fifth full length effort New Wave Order can't be seen as a return to form and is an overall challenging doom and gothic metal record that needs a few spins to slowly grow upon listeners. Calm, introspective and patient fans will ultimately be rewarded with little details that will grow upon them in the strong middle section and the decent closing segments. The record's opening tunes and first two singles in particular are however everything but impressive and plod along without leaving any other mark than a yawn. The Foreshadowing was one of the greatest doom and gothic metal bands about a decade ago but the group's career has derailed for unfathomable reasons and the quartet now needs to work very hard to get back on track to take its potential second chance. Another studio record in the near future and especially a few concerts around the world should be clever investments to spread the name of the talented but unsuccessful musicians. The band's back catalogue most certainly deserves the genuine attention of any genre fan around the world. Instead of starting your discovery of the quartet with this new effort, you should proceed chronologically instead and enjoy the much better Days of Nothing first.