It wasn't until I sat down and tried to describe what Eyes of Fire sounded like that I realized how unique their sound actually was.

The first few times I played "Prisons," the second full-length album by Century Media's Eyes of Fire, it failed to make any notable impression on me. I found it a bit boring and a little monotonous, not really the sort of music I prefer to listen to, and figured that it would end up with a middling review at best.

Of course, whether I like an album or not has little to do with whether it is a good album or not.

Eyes of Fire are a SoCal quintet playing music that combines elements of doom, sludge, hardcore and death metal. "Prisons" is predominantly mid-tempo, with distorted guitars and plenty of percussion. Most of the vocals are harsh hardcore-esque screams, with some additional clean vocals. There is a dedicated keyboardist. The sound of this album is dark, aggressive, depressive... a little like Neurosis, a bit like Katatonia, and slightly like Slumber. In other words, pretty damn unique.

The opening track, "Blood (This Consumes You)" is mean and thunderous, dissolving into fuzz and distortion, while the following song "Gone Forever" is more passive and much more melancholy. "True Love" is even more passive and ambient. "Falling Apart" even manages to sound like Amorphis, somehow. All but a few of the songs on "Prisons" are in the four- to six-minute range, with one track exceeding seven minutes and another surpassing eight.

According to the press materials accompanying this disc, the official release includes a bonus disc containing a single 25-minute track, "Home." I personally would have loved to have heard this song, as Eyes of Fire seem to excel at the long, drawn-out drawl of extreme metal ambience.

I can't claim that this is the sort of music I go out of my way to listen to. Eyes of Fire is not a dynamic band. They are not especially catchy. "Prisons" quickly becomes a sea of frothing gloom and turbulent emotions, and subsequent listenings do little to instill a sense of range. Halfway through the album I have little emotional recollection of the first half, save the words that I wrote elsewhere in this review. But I also support creativity and any musical endeavor that seeks to tread new ground. And I am familiar enough with the genres of doom and sludge that, while I certainly hear similarities with other bands, Eyes of Fire don't sound too much like anyone specific. And there is very little here that I actually dislike. It's more a matter of preference than anything concrete. My biggest complaint is the lack of diversity from the beginning of "Prisons" to its end - and there are other bands for whom I actually like this characteristic (Rosetta, to name a recently-reviewed band).

So... yeah. I don't particularly care for Eyes of Fire, and I doubt "Prisons" will be getting a whole lot of play in the upcoming months and years. But it's not a bad album, per se. Fans of other doomy, sludgy extreme metal bands like Isis or Neurosis will probably find Eyes of Fire to be to their liking. For this reviewer, however, "Prisons" makes good background music for dim, rainy mornings, and that's about the extent of things.