Album Review

Prayer For Cleansing- The Rain In Endless Fall

Prayer For Cleansing is a metalcore band from Raleigh, North Carolina. The band plays hardcore, metalcore, death metal, black metal. This album was released in 1999 on Tribunal Records. This is my favorite metalcore record of all time and this is also my favorite extreme metal album of all time. When I first heard this band the North Carolina hardcore scene was starting to produce some amazing new metalcore bands. They had bands like Bloodjinn, Undying, Azazel, Prayer For Cleansing. These bands are so metal sounding and I liked Prayer For Cleansing the most because they sounded the most metal of all the bands. All of these bands are metalcore bands but when Prayer For Cleansing infused hardcore music with black metal that just wasn't being done at this time. They just mixed so many different styles of extreme metal together that they were simply groundbreaking. They have these melodies that are simply sublime and unforgettable. The vocals are very raspy and very serpentine in their delivery and they cast a long shadow all the way out to the lands of fire and ice. The singing is a nice touch and sounds very pretty. I love the creepy whispers and that you can sometimes hear the lyrics clearly. The growling vocals are incredible and make me think of the best death metal bands ever. The guitars are done so well that they make beautiful music together and they are the backbone of this album. The guitars can go from such a fast pace to such a melodic pace at the drop of a hat. The drumming is outstanding and just brutally fast but it also slows down when melody is present. Prayer For Cleansing are such amazing musicians that it seems like this album was a breeze for them to make and play the music that they recorded. I really love their vocalist David Anthem because he can sing so many different vocal styles and it just seems easy to him. His vocal range is so impressive because he is screaming all the time and he never lets up for a second on this record. The mood of this album is very triumphant but also very sorrowful. The mood of this album is also very victorious but also very gothic. The hardcore breakdowns on this album could turn any moshpit into a feeding frenzy of hardcore kids trying out their best mortal kombat moves. The black metal parts on this record will take you to a far away place where black metal is magical and infamous. It will take you to Norway to the cities of Oslo, Norway and Bergen, Norway. This record is so breathtaking and so strangely otherworldly that it can transport you to North Carolina the home state of Prayer For Cleansing or all the way to a far away galaxy. If you have read my reviews you will notice that I didn't use funny metaphors in this article. This is because Prayer For Cleansing means so much to me as a metalcore band. Since I first discovered The Rain In Endless Fall in 1999 I have never heard a record like it and I have never heard an album this good since. I wanted to start a band in the same style as Prayer For Cleansing. When Prayer For Cleansing went on tour and I saw that they weren't playing in Chicago I had to convince them to play here and what an amazing show that was. Prayer For Cleansing makes you think, they make you feel, they make you happy, they make you sad, they make you hold your head up high, they make you feel down in the dumps. A band that can make you feel such a wide range of emotions is an important band. I'm not a big lyric guy but I really love their lyrics because they speak to me. The music of Prayer For Cleansing is very original sounding and the lyrics are also done in a very original way. I implore you to listen to this album because it is so special and done with so much reverence and honor to the metalcore genre. If you like Prayer For Cleansing you might want to check out my review of Azazel because you may like them also. This was a pleasure for me to write and thanks for reading this.  Thanks again.
​Kevin

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