Wind, rain, sound effects, noises....boring! Suddenly: piano. Okay, those riffs sound okay, but I don't like that fuzzy sound that's overnoizing the piano... Pads and Strings now, and the fuzzing is all gone for about one minute. Well, it does create a certain dark atmosphere, but now they disappered and the fuzzing is back.. Suddenly: Piano, strings, no fuzzing: killer melody! Warm and beautiful! Some dark pads and stuff appear in the background: great dark atmosphere! Then it's just water and sound effects, before it's back with some melody again: acoustic guitars and strings... then noises again, some chanting in Norwegian, etc, etc...
Norwegian Northaunt's music is rather atmospheric, but unfortunately this album bores me. "haunted dark ambient" is what the label call it, which should be a just fine description. If you're a fan of this genre, Northaunt might be worth checking out for you, but for the average metalhead I think this is a bit too ambient/atmospheric and not melodic enough. Basicly, there are pieces where this album creates an extremely cold, dark and sad atmosphere. There are few black metal bands that can create an atmosphere like this. The problem is, these moments do not appear often enought, it's a bit monotone and easily gets boring. If Northaunt had created more recognizable songs, with a nice dose of melody I could easily have loved this disc. Well, the fact is that this disc is full of noises and soundeffects that give me nothing with fragments of melodic synths and acoustic guitars, that at times can sound awesome... In other words: fans of the genre might find much appreciation in Northaunt's music, others should beware of the fact that this is not a standard instrumental project like Mortiis, this is more atmosphere than melody, and as the atmosphere doesn't hold, I find this whole disc rather insignificant.
Also included on the disc is a video track in .avi format. If you ask me, this black/white 3:22min video is rather boring and insignificant, but maybe someone else would make more out of it...
15/07-01