New Days for the Ancient Wisdom

Your latest cd is comprised of three demos and a live track which basically covers the entire history of your band up untill this point. Tearing apart the essence of your music as a band then it seems you have wanted to evoke the kind of pagan bm that early Borknagar/Enslaved were able to so effectively able to create.

From all outside appearances like the cd's artwork, lyrics, & photos, your band gives the impression that you all know exactly how to evoke streams of rivers, frosted dew on forgotten forests and the like. Consequently your music for the most part follows 'standard' pagan-eque bm with good screeching tone, slightly epic atmosphere in regards to occasional choir/ambiance use, lilting melodies and the like..

However, as good as your combination/emulation of the above bands/techniques, your music absolutely loses all relveance and relation to black metal when your singer switches to his truly one of a kind (and hopefully never again to be emulated) Gregorian monk-meets-retarded-American-Indian vocals. No matter what context they are used in on this compilation, nothing prevents it from a) destroying ANY bm atmosphere (especially when complemented by female vocals/cheesy synths in the earlier demos) & coupled with b) their tendency to carve up quite alot of time...

Normally it would be quite a loaded statement to say something along the lines of 'your band should quit playing black metal all-together and form some sort of wannabe-neo prog/pwar metal band', but given the total output of your band as much as this release has effectivly demonstrated everything you have to bring to the table; it is with full confidence then that I for one will make such an exception and say that your band should seriously stop trying to create black metal on all counts.