The Am Tuat is a sacred text from Egypt. The Tuat is, as I understand the Underworld which the boat of sun God Rah travels during the night, each hour of which is represented by one of the books 12 chapters. You can easily find the whole scripture as it’s available on the net as public domain if you want to explore it in more detail. As far as this Dutch band are concerned they are no Nile clone and really leave any Egyptology aside from this point forth. Formed in 1997 they appear to have one album and one demo behind them before knocking out this lengthy self-released album now.
The trio, who are now looking for an additional guitar player, stylistically embrace an epic and progressive doom flow with textures of death metal about them. This is mainly down to the three types of vocals; gruff and I have to say without any emotion and atmosphere, high pitched squeals, and clean, which are the best employed. In fact it is the least metal aspects of the album that are the most engrossing in my opinion. Take short acoustic number ‘Ahead Of Sadness’ for example. It’s a fragrant and airy piece and quite beautiful in its fragility, if the entire album were like this I would have really enjoyed it in an Anathema sort of way, on the fringes of metal acceptability.
However this 66 minute album has been quite a struggle. I hate to use the word boring in a review but much of it is, right down to the terribly plain grey, charcoal cover which really lacks any imagination. Even with a self released status surely the band could have found someone with artistic skills to knock up something to make this stand out.
The longest (thankfully) track on the album ‘A Cry… The Sound Of Tragedy’ at just shy of 18 minutes is an exercise in taking things too far. I just find the growls that start this opus generic and without any real depth and emotion about them and guitars, drum and bass just strike as tiredly going through the motions. There is simply no warmth or atmosphere here. An acoustic moment has a bit of a tinge of Opeth about it and is frankly a relief from listening to the monotone growls. Interspersing the two styles works well for a while but of course this is one of those songs that never knows when to die and should have been put out of its misery long before it finally dies. Unfortunately the last few numbers just drag things out even further and there is not a spark about them to speak of.
It’s a shame as I wanted to like this more and genre wise it is the sort of thing I enjoy and it was not generic or copying anyone else in the slightest. Simple fact is that if music lacks any atmosphere, no matter how hard you try, any good intentions are pretty much redundant and Inmotion needed more emotion.
http://www.amtuat.com
http://www.myspace.com/amtuat
