(ECHO) is a five-piece Melodic Death/Doom Metal band hailing from Brescia, Lombardy, Italy. Since their inception in 2007, the band has released two demos and three full-length albums. The most recent record, "Below The Cover Of Clouds", was released on September 13th of this year through BadMoodMan Music.

The album starts us off with an eleven-minute epic titled "(Y)Our Warmth". There's no holding back from this group as it's the longest track on the record and by far the most memorable. It's a slow-building track with the vocals not coming in until after four minutes into the song. When it does, we're greeted with Fabio Urietti's harsh, growling death metal style vocals laid perfectly over the ever-slow doom-laden riffs and rhythm section. Urietti's clean vocals come in later on in the song which is a dynamic that carries the whole record. It ends up being a nice mix if you can get past the fact that Urietti's clean vocals sound suspiciously similar to that of Tobias Forge of the controversial band GHOST.

The album flows nicely for the most part except for one track that I considered to be a bit of dead-weight in an otherwise powerful collection of songs. The third track, titled "Culmine 2.18", is an instrumental track and while it's the shortest on the album, it still feels a little out of place. It's a little too long to be an interlude and as the third track on the album it feels like we just get going into a rhythm before it's broken up by this piece. Musically, the track is fine but I think it would've been better served as an outro track or just omitted for a future release entirely.

"Blind Snow" takes us back into the record after the instrumental with my favorite riff on the entire album. The riff is trickled throughout the record and really shows off the fantastic doomy guitar work of Mauro Ragnoli and Simone Saccheri. The drum work in the later half of the song builds to a heavy finish that shows the power this band put into the record. The song ends with some subtle acoustic work over a slowed down drum section that brings the piece together nicely.

This record is pretty solid, with one exception - the third track. If you're a fan of bands like MY DYING BRIDE and PARADISE LOST, there's something on this album for you and you should definitely check it out.