I can almost tell what some of you must be thinking: “Prophecy… Sententia… a new neo-folk band that I don’t know?”. Well, I got to know Prophecy as a label that releases both metal and neo-folk, but the promos that I received through Battle Helm made me have to adjust this idea. Leakh is definitely neither of these two.
I never heard of the band and the booklet doesn’t give me much to go on. The band consists of Jimmy S. Coven and Johan Tjust and used to be known as “Coven”. The sound the band produces is pretty hard to describe. There are extremely emotional vocals, lots of acoustic guitar, but also electric. The music is rather simple, but very effective to create a desperate mood in combination with the vocals. There is pretty peculiar guitar-playing that reminds a bit of Dream Into Dust at times. The mood does as well now and then. Because of the vocals, also reminiscences of the Shadow Project’s “From The Heart” come to my mind. The vocals are sometimes quite typical gothic ‘grave’ vocals. At other times they are screamed, mourned or sung in a tortured manner. In a way I think it is safe to say that this is American gothic music, but not too typical. I like this pretty much, so this is a good strike from the German Prophecy label.