Mithras - Worlds Beyond The Veil

V.V.V.V.V.

Houses Ov Mercury
Jan 20, 2004
32,122
43
48
Dracut, MA
This can be found originally by going to the 'My Reviews' link in my signature and finding the corresponding link, etc., etc.
---------------------------------------------------------------------

These guys REALLY know how to make an atmosphere, and I don't even CARE about the synthesizer presets they used. This is both bone-chillingly creepy and face-rupturingly frenetic, unsettlingly chilling and mind-numbingly fast and technical.

Adverbs aside, this album is really fucking amazing. The first track, 'Portal To The...' is a 6 minute "instrumental". Right from the first...oh...4 or so minutes you can tell this ain't going to be your normal death metal release. And from that thought stems the wonderful question..."What kind of album WILL it be, then?" Draw your own conclusions, but I bet you won't be ready for the next track. The title track is BLISTERINGLY fast, starting with a nice bass roll, and leading to some good riffing. Throughout each song, there is always this curtain of spacey "out there" keyboards. They're not by any means the fruity kind we see in some bands, namely power and Gothenburg melo-death bands, but they are instead just an absolute screen of sound that drones on while the drums churn out insane blastbeats and double-bass. Some will consider this actual "brutal death metal". The vocals aren't "teh burpz0rz" or whatever you like to call brutal death vocals, but rather, very deep, thick growls.

Each song is very different, and the album doesn't get stale while you're listening, which is good because it is relatively long and has some interesting instrumental pieces.

By the time you get to the best track on the album, you'll have already listened to 6 of the other tracks. That being said, the best track, 'Psyrens" completely BLOWS away any notion you had of the album at first.

'Psyrens' starts off with very soothing and calm wave sound effects and some nice synth work, promptly leading into THE most skullfucking riff on the album. This song is seen by me as the obvious juxtaposition of beuty and brutality of the album, showcasing some mean-as-fuck vocals and some of the craziest technical drumming you'll ever hear in death metal.

This album also deserves heavy praise for its lyrics. I'm a sucker for sci-fi/fantasy lyrics in death metal (see Nocturnus, etc.), and this album delivers the goods. The album seems to have a feel of a sort of musical chase-scene. The narrator (or narrator's race) seems to be being chased by an entity that is crossing the "World's Divide". Read the lyrics and try to figure them out yourself. Also some wonderful album art.

Overall this album just completely batters your head in with no mercy while letting you come out of your neck every now and then to witness the pulchritude that are...the Worlds Beyond The Veil.

93%
 
Terrorizer hailed it as the best album of all time and went on a 6 (or so) paragraph rant just trying to cram as many positive adjectives and metaphors into it as they could. It was very funny. Your review is better.
 
Well, it's certainly not the best album of all time, they must have been lighted. It is however, a great album that deserves a lot of praise and a look by anyone who claims to love atmosphere, meaning it can appeal to black metal fans and death metal fans alike.
 
It took time for me to get into it, too, mainly for the many parts of the album that are more atmospheric, but overall it fucking crushes.