This disc starts out as very crappy gothic, but at times moves into some fairly atypical black sounding metal with gothic overtones. The metal riffing is, at times, reminiscent of Swedish black metal, with songs consisting of repeated chord progressions with melodic, harmonized guitars overtop, but mainly the guitars follow a latter day Rotting Christ, limp-wristed pattern of chord progressions. This interchange of gothic-then-metal continues throughout the disc, but sometimes its black metallish, sometimes its doom metallish. I'll hand it to Autumnblaze, they write some marginally original tunes. But, the inclusion of those damn whiny gothic vocals makes my stomach churn as if I had just drunk from a spittoon after a monster truck rally. Acoustic passages, flutes and clean vocal parts (almost spoken) abound on the disc. Production is clear during the less metal bits, but the guitars are deliciously dirty during the metal parts - creating a nice contrast between the clean gothic whininess, and the strong metal parts. Overall this disc is totally gothic in nature, so if you don't dig gothic, don't get this disc. Oh yea, and the female vocalist is tone deaf, or is that done on purpose?

© 2000 j. mcintyre