At the End of a Journey

The EP, “At the End of a Journey”, is the only release of Skon, an one man band from Slovakia, which was formed in 2008. This EP was released in 2010 and it contains three compositions of Skon and one cover of Katatonia with a total duration of about thirty minutes. Their music, which cannot be characterized as Black Metal, it appears already from the first track that it is much influenced by the music of Katatonia, so the cover is not selected randomly.

The riffs mainly are mid tempo, melancholic riffs which reminds a mixture of the second period of Katatonia with some elements of the first. The tracks are quite long in duration and their structure is almost the same in the entire album, as also the technique that they use in composing the riffs, so that the tracks look almost identical. Nevertheless, they create emotions and they have some mentionable moments. But the biggest disadvantage, in my opinion is the absence of personality and creativity as the resemblance with the sound of Katatonia is big.

The guitars are played well, their sound is clean and melancholic. The bass isn’t audible while the drums have simple lines, rather repetitive, in fact they follow the guitars. The few nice turnings and passages of the drums, are not enough in order to make the compositions more interesting. The vocals, depending on the part and the feeling, change from Black Metal vocals to clean Katatonia like and in many parts they become a rhythmic narration. The production is clean, a little bassy, and along with the mixture the sound that they produce, fits to the style of the compositions and it highlights the emotions which are created. The lyrics are written in English and they are melancholic, they express the personal thoughts of the writer about the world, life, loneliness.

Generally the album of Skon is not that bad, concerning its technical elements. What surely annoys is the absence of originality and of the personal element in their compositions. Maybe in a future release they will find their identity and that will appear in their sound. For sure I don’t suggest this album to anyone except the fans of Katatonia. The rest of you avoid it.