Midnight Horror

Black metal. One of the easiest, or, from another angle of perception, one of the most difficult forms of metal. The genre, among all the various ways to express the dark toxic metalness in one's soul, has grown into an exceptionally diverse entity, and I think the time for the different schools of thought to manifest themselves as new definite genres is looming. Black metal is already a blanket term that covers stuff from primordially raw simplicity, via borderline noise and ambient, to highly sophisticated symphonic black metal, and the impossibly many branches in between rival the number of rodent species in the evolutionary tree. To say that something is black metal is equal to saying very close to nothing and simply pointing at the murky shrubbery near the cemetery wall. Somewhere in the branchings of that twisted tree hides the problem of the Twilight Ophera's album. They may have been infected by the pollen of another kind of a tree, and maybe they even hold on to a branch of a bit less dark willow with the other hand, all the time believing they are brachiating under the rusted leaves of the blackest tree in the metal forest.

Twilight Ophera lies on the symphonic/melodic edge of the wide field. Usually symphonic seems to simply mean an abundance of synths; they may or may not emulate a symphonic orchestra. Melodic, in terms of black metal, is a much more interesting idea. So far I haven't found a good example of truly melodic black metal, but I think that is a direction someone with enough talent should explore. Beware: you may end up sounding like Dimmu Borgir if you do.

Twilight Ophera's Midnight Horror contains 9 songs, but they might as well be a single track. Each and every one of them lacks a cohesive idea I usually expect from a metal song. The Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen is the only famous rock piece that jumps from theme to theme without any apparent logic and still manages to stay in one piece. Twilight Ophera fails in the same, even without trying anything even remotely as ambitious. The songs are collections of riffs and synths, and in the end, they cannot be told apart. The result is a flea market of stuff, with no discernible order or objective, and resembles running simultaneously in every direction without ever achieving anything. The pointless frolicking soon turns into boredom, like watching two entirely blind teams playing soccer.

The soundscape on the album is a kind of a mule. Too many too different things have been incorporated into a work that should be achieved with much less, and the result is sterile. What is worse is the imbalance of things. While the vocalist manages to produce a pretty good black metallic coarse shout, the rest of the band seems to forget that they should play black metal. The guitars are most of the time virtually nonexistent, and the synths steal the stage. They try very much to sound ominous and evil, but lack the idea and drive to really make an impression, and remind me of a stereotypical Dracula from a 70's Hammer film playing Georg Orf on his bat-winged organ. The drums are boring mid-tempo pounding, occasionally lapsing into the mortal sin of overdone bass drum and sounding like an old Harley Davidson in need of swift euthanasia. The bass spends its time somewhere else, possibly having a smoke next to the studio's coffee pot.

A further listening raises a much more sinister idea. Maybe the band really doesn't know they should be playing black metal? The mellow guitars and the overpowering synths are more like power metal, while the evanescent riffing is more melodeath than BM. The songwriting is wandering around without a focal point, and as the result the songs all sound the same. It's often nice if a metal song has different A, B, C and D parts, but they should have a theme of some kind, something to hold them together. Twilight Ophera's Midnight Horror lacks that ingredient, and in the end, they have enough material for twenty songs, but not a single track really scores a goal. The vocals could be black metal, the synths would want be black metal, and the rest of the band sounds like they play because, well... they DID pay the rent for the studio in advance, and it would be nice to have an album after all the hassle and the money spent.

This album is an epitome of many mistakes a basically professional bunch of musicians can make. Each and every one of them is competent with his instrument, but that is not enough. They have attempted and created too much, and the parts just won't fit together. Too many ideas from too many fields have been crammed together, and the result isn't viable as an organism. Good black metal retains an idea of simplicity, even in the best of the seemingly complex symphonic works. Once unnecessary complexity takes over, replaces the mean attitude, and starts piloting the music instead of a simple vision, it's time to forget being black metal and start another band. The easy aspect of black metal is the simplicity; anyone with enough vision can make a credible black metal song, and such minor things as sound quality and technical skill have much less to do with the quality of the final product than in other metal genres, such as power or death. The difficulty of black metal is the very same simplicity; once a band loses sight of it and starts forcing too much unnecessary ambition into their songs, they miss the target and become something else. This doesn't mean black metal should be simple; on the contrary. It's just that once a certain threshold is crossed and the music loses it's focus, the results can be very disappointing. The complexity must serve the all-important fundamental simplicity, otherwise the music ends up losing the vicious essence that defines black metal. That threshold is much lower in black metal than in other metal genres.

This album is close to useless. It leaves no impression whatsoever, despite containing a remarkable stockpile of elements. The band needs a purpose, an objective of some kind to rise above mediocrity, and that objective should be achievable with much less valuable musical DNA than what has been wasted on the Midnight Horror. Less stuff, more focused vision, please.