Dead Silent Slumber - Entombed in the Midnight Hour (1999)

Dead Silent Slumber was a short lived side-project of Jens Rydén who back then was well known as the sadistic screamer who fronted Swedish blackened melodic death metal legends, Naglfar. In September of '99 some friends and Jens released a much overlooked gem titled, 'Entombed in the Midnight Hour' through now defunct record label Hammerheart Records.

Although Dead Silent Slumber has typically been labeled as a symphonic black metal band I've always found that label to be considerably off since the music is overly melodic in character with plenty of colorful riffs and impressive solos, the vocals are hardly in a black metal style, the lyrics have absolutely nothing to do with satanism or destruction of Christianity and the synthesizers have a sound that's more reminiscent of classic horror movies then the actual symphonic sound that bands like Emperor and Dimmu Borgir were striving for back in the day. Honestly I've always felt calling DSS something like horror metal would be more appropriate and I think you'll understand once you hear the music and read the lyrics.

The album kicks off with the hard driving and catchy, 'In the Glare of the Moon,' which is a fantastic mid-paced metal song with some fine guitar work throughout and towards the end features cleanly sung power metal-ish vocals from a guy named Jensa Carlsson alongside Jens screamed voice, which is just killer sounding, to say the least. The title track is actually an acoustic piece with both slow acoustic guitars, highly atmospheric synths, a stunning electric guitar solo, whispery lead vocals from Jens with guest female singer Ann Åkerman and cello player Maria Hamrin added to create quite an impressive piece of music. I've also always been a big fan of the song, 'Blood Collapse' since the solo at the end is quite good though it tends to remind me of a solo from an old Ceremonial Oath song, while the synths in, 'Raising the Suicide Chalice' sound like they were influenced from the old 60's sitcom, 'The Munsters,' and finally the solo at the end of, 'Lick the Wound' is just fantastic too.

Collectively the album consists of seven atmospheric melodic mid-paced songs, which totals in for just thirty nine minutes, but it's an album I've constantly come back too and at least in the ten years that I've owned it I've never grown bored with it.

Nowadays Jens is still involved with music as he's the front man for Swedish epic/viking metal band Thyrfing as well he also did another solo project four years ago called Profundi, which I've heard sounds similar to DSS, but I haven't gotten my hands on it, for whatever reason...