The Darkest Winter

Just when I thought no one would challenge Moonspells position of “the most laughably dire gothic metal band in Iberia” Sonata Nocturna come along and not only challenge for it, but swipe off the crown off the piss soaked Portuguese crap merchants within an instance. Sonata Nocturna imagine themselves as the dark and mysterious union of Nightwish, Moonspell and Wildhoney era Tiamat. Unfortunately rather than harvest the elements which made those bands bearable they’ve taken each bands worse aspects and mixed them all together in a bad and frankly vomit inducing gothic stew. Imagine Nightwishs cheesy blandness mixed with Moonspells foul and frankly laughable attempts at summoning up a gothic atmosphere with Wildhoneys mind numbing boringness and you have a faint idea of what Sonata Nocturna sounds like.

Unfortunately its not as bad as that sounds; its worse. You see Sonata Nocturna lack one vital ingredient which most metal bands need to work, that ingredient being coherence. On 2 of the 3 (I know there’s officially a fourth track, but how is somebody plonking a keyboard aimlessly for a few seconds a song?) tracks on this album, Sonata Nocturna start off with a cinematic if generic melody line. They then precede to lose it in a musical sea of pompous synth stabs and riffs that Korn would ashamed of. At the height of this musical lunacy, its almost impossible to describe how shite this sounds. The nearest I can get is by asking you to imagine Evanescence covering Camel with Amy Lee’s pet monkey jumping up and down on the keyboard . This habit of losing all trace of a noticeable melody, is where Sonata Nocturna fail the most. Of Darkest Winter lack any organic musical flow with makes it possible for the listener to even listen to it passively let alone enjoy it.

The best track is the third one which is what Sonata Nocturna would sound like if they were acquainted with mr tune more often. Even then all you have is an average symphonic gothic metal song but with oodles and oodles of annoying tackiness bestowed on it by Sonata Nocturnas other faults

Then theirs the musicians involved. The Female vocalist has a pleasant operatic voice that is not only wasted but tarnished to be used in conjunction with such tripe. The guitarist it must be said have worked out a superb guitar tone for accompanying some of the less vile aspects of this monstrosity of an ep. Unfortunately when he gets onto the insipid riffing this tone only adds to the crass mess that is this record. When he started to play percussively, it only made matters worse. The bass is too prominent and high pitched in the mix and gnaws away at you in the same way a permanently ringing bell. The keyboardist has technical ability, I’ll give him that. Unfortunately he thinks it’s a great idea to use the same keyboard sounds that 12 year olds use when in music classes as they think it sounds goofy. The drum programming is rather basic and stilted. I could program better drums on my playstation using music 1998 for fucks sake. At least I would have varied the beat occasionally.

All in all, this ep is about as gothic as Coal Chamber, as tiresome as a being trapped in a lift with a Jehovah’s witness, and as enjoyable as having your genitals burnt off with Hydrochloric acid. Avoid it .