Lovecraftian Dark

A long time ago, someone sent me a single song off this album. I adored the song, but in time, I pretty much forgot all about them. Then one day by chance, I found this CD with a mere one dollar price sticker. I was quite pleased. Even then, I did not realize how great of a bargain it was, for this CD is something special.

The album starts off with a great symphonic intro. A cold testament to the tracks ahead. The strings fade into a eerie ambience - then the first song, Masquerade of Sickness kicks in. I would definetely just stick with calling this "melodic dark metal" because this really is not black metal at all ... but, this is definetely some kick ass stuff. You can bang your head, and still feel the power of the symphonics and softer parts. Throes Matrix is another melodic gem. Some slightly off-beats, and some dark soaring melodies ... the song's a bit short though. The following track will go on to sound more evil than meloncoly. At this point, I feel the need to mention - the title of the title being what it is, and how it can remind me of Lovecraft at times. My enthusiasm for this CD was given a boost when seeing the title. Lovecraft was the master of all things dark. Knowing that, I knew if this band could possibly in anyway manage to reflect the evil, meloncholy or gloomy nature of Lovecraft, I would have something awesome to tell of. To a certain degree, it is achieved.

Throughout the tracks, the pattern of meloncholy with the occational evil is repeated. And upon a closer listen, songs such as Wrathcast, do actually have a black metal feel - so, I take that back, but I would still not call this a black metal release.

Okay, so I haven't described exactly the music, right? Well ... it's pretty hard to describe. It's a bit of power+thrash+melodic death+black+a pinch of progressive. Throw it in a blender ... and there's Lovecraftian Dark.

The vocals are possibly the only other part of the music that is "black", very harsh, relatively high in pitch, and harsh. Normally I point out everything special in the instrumentation, but what's special here is what they're playing, not how. There is still solid drumming, guitar playing, and even some pretty good female vocals at times.

Though the music is very solid and is bit apart from others in it's kindred genres ... (because you really can't call this black, death, or thrash) unfortunately, the songs' structuring is generally flawed. It's too much based on -verse-chorus-verse-chorus. Even though some song will start with gloomy ambience and/or symphonics - those elements are not actually incorperated into the main song structure. It's sad, because it would boost the CD to epic proportions. The only other thing that stand out in the body of the song is solos ... they are good solos, but tend to seperate from the music in sounding more "optimistic" or ... not as dark.

Unfortunately also for people who prefer something "evil" to something "sad" or "meloncholy" (myself being one of those) this is more sad sounding than evil.

Final thought: Solid music, with an original sound. It's mostly mood music, but great when in the right mood. These guys aren't the most gifted musicians or shining song writers, but they're got something going for them in their odd blend of music. Check it out if you're open minded, or like "meloncholy" but not overly depressed sounding music.