Writing a review for a bad album is easy: just take what most annoyed you about it and rip into it. But writing a review for a good album is much harder. After all, how many times can you simply say that an album is brilliant and beautiful?

Well...Faith & Disease's new album is both brilliant and beautiful. Over the course of several albums, F&D have been refining a unique sound that can be compared to Mazzy Star, the Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance, and Faith/Seventeen Seconds-era Cure. What makes Faith & Disease stand apart from most ethereal darkwave bands is their embrace of rural folk elements. Along with Sixteen Horsepower, Faith & Disease are one of the few truly American "gothic" music groups.

Beneath the Trees, Faith & Disease's first album for Projekt, stands as their strongest work to date. Highlights include...well the whole thing is entrancing. A particularly interesting track is the murder ballad Banks of the Ohio, which sounds like a recording found in a vault somewhere. All of the playing is solid.

Simply one of the best ethereal darkwave albums I have ever heard. Go buy it.

- - Ruthven
website: http://gothic.vei.net