Birth of the Prophet

The band's style is reminiscent of recent Dimmu Borgir, but devoid of any pretence of black metal style or aesthetics. Their music has a solid heavy metal basis, and to this is added passages of passages of tremolo riffing with a slight industrial edge. Unlike Dimmu Borgir, the keyboards are generally unobtrusive, acting as a backdrop to the music rather than providing hooks. The vocals are closer to shouting than actual singing, and female backing vocals are used to enhance the atmosphere, rather than a one-dimensional attempt to beautify the music.

The "symphonic" and "female backing vocals" descriptions for this album are slightly deceptive, however. Opposed to almost every other symphonic metal band, who use keyboards to create a romantic or fantasy feel to the music, Mylidian use it to create a cold and synthetic feel, fully in keeping with their lyrics. The atmosphere has a lot in common with cyberpunk imagery.

This hybrid of heavy and extreme metal is used very effectively by the band, avoiding monotony and blasting by never retreating too far from traditional metal song writing. They incorporate extreme metal elements so organically into their style that it is a wonder that more bands haven't written music like this. The lead vocals switching between aggressive and more narrative styles, and keyboard/female vocal backing during the choruses create a very epic feel to the songs, without requiring them to be particularly long. The songs themselves are diverse and the album mercifully short (long albums so often being an Achilles' heel of "progressive" bands), meaning that there are few weak points, and many strong ones.

Instrumentally there is nothing to complain about. The vocalist is deliberately unmelodic in his style (occasionally bordering on a black metal croak, see 'Prisoner of My Dreams'), but sings powerfully without straining and switches to clean vocals effectively. The rest of the band is as technically tight as can be expected from a group which has been around since 1993.

While this band is on a label with poor distribution, I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in something a little different.