I bought this album when it was first released. I thought it stood out then, and even now when I play it, it still stands out. Symphonic black metal has been done to death, even when this was released but this album just isn't like the rest.
The symphonic or 'classical' music side of this release is quite bombastic,sometimes baroque, chaotic and sometimes quite upbeat and almost....happy sounding at times. It doesn't fall quite into the movie sound track level of bombastic like
Dimmu Borgir have adopted neither does it sound industrial and synthetic like bands such as
Samael or
Sirius, it sounds actually like a real orchestra but not over bearing and it doesn't kill the album. Suprisingly both the classical music and metal parts of this album run parallel to each other without drowning each other out and run very well together despite both having the same levels of choatic quality.
The metallic part of this is mostly quite fast, with old '
Nightside eclipse' style aggressive vocals, the Norwegian sounding guitaring and fast clattering drumming which is filled with blast beats , tom rolls, and double bass drumming.
But it's not all foot to the floor chaos, it does step off the gas pedal sometimes and even treats us to just a solo piano track.
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