Monday, 17 August 2015

Album Review; Dark Mirror Ov Tragedy - The Lunatic Chapters Of Heavenly Creatures


Released Via Wormholedeath Records
Genre: Symphonic Black Metal

Track Listing:

1. Thy Sarcophagus
2. Unwritten Symphony
3. Dancing In The Burning Mirror
4. Ichnography On Delusion
5. Virtuoso Of The Atmosphere
6. Perish By Luminos Dullness
7. The Constellation Of Shadows
8. The Name Of Tragedy
9. The Noumenon I Carved


 

This band’s fourth release contains nine tracks in total, and those nine tracks are full to the brim of gothic charm, classical influence and sharp instrumentation. There are a lot of ingredients here to appeal to fans of different strains of metal; there’s some decent riffs and shred-heavy guitar solos that deliver weight and fury to the sound, while violin and keyboards offer a dark, seductive beauty. This contrast makes for a very multi-dimensional listen. Take the standout track ‘Dancing In The Burning Mirror’, which shifts well between the two extremes over its nine minute duration.

Each seventh of this South Korean band clearly knows their role very well, as this album displays Dark Mirror Ov Tragedy to be a cohesive unit. It’s all too easy for a band trying to meld so many different styles together to sound like a clumsy mishmash, but this album shows the band’s compositional skills. The vocal shrieks may sound thinner than most black metal fans would like, but each rasp cuts through the heavy mix of music well enough. The three minute acoustic interlude ‘Virtuoso of the Atmosphere’ doesn’t feel essential to the album’s flow, especially when ‘Perish by Luminos Dullness’ could have easily carried the album onwards with good panache.

Dark Mirror Ov Tragedy have shown an elegant and broad-minded approach to extreme metal that the underground scene would do well to learn from. It’s not perfect, but it’s far from boring.

Rating: 7/10

Links: https://www.facebook.com/darkmirrorovtragedy
           http://www.wormholedeath.com/


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