Em Sinfonia - Intimate Portrait

Having heard of the band for years, ';Intimate Portrait'; serves as my inaugural listening experience to Broken Hope's Brian Griffin';s doom metal band. And I';m quite pleased to say that I walked away form the disc quite impressed. ';Intimate'; is quite an emotional journey, full of your usual doom metal trademarks, like the down tuned dirge like riffs and arrangements, the death metal growls trade off with the angelic female vocals. But something in the music makes ';Intimate'; really stick out. Lead vocalist Bunny';s (yup, that';s her name) vocals carry such emotional weight; it brings to mind some 4AD and early Nettwerk groups like the Rose Chronicles and The Moon Seven Times. The music Em Sinfonia writes also has more twist and turns than most doom metal bands, straying form the painfully slow chugga chugga of bands like Crowbar for a more diverse delivery, equally mixing things up between the beautiful and serene cleaner parts and more dirty mid paced metal riffs. In all honesty, I would rather listen to this than any of Broken Hopes records, simply because there';s an honesty and conviction to the music that you rarely hear. And unlike Eric Rutan's foray into similar territory, Em Sinfonia's music actually works, instead of sounding like old death metal riffs being with female vocals. Probably the best ';doom'; metal record I';ve heard in a long fuckin time. Depression and Em Sinfonia, the perfect match.