While it's not the band's fault, two things here probably gave me overly high expectations for this disc. I really like the graphic design of that logo, where it's half illuminated letter and half celtic batwing (which reminded me of the classic Tiamat logo and probably helped set some unrealistic musical expectations). Similarly, Messiah's Frugi plays session bass here, so I was already thinking of early '90s Messiah going into this, even if the music is totally different.
Decent gothic metal. Instrumentation is good, particularly the organ-synths. The 2nd and 3rd tracks have some heft to them, so it's not super lightweight stuff, but there are enough mellow parts (including a balladish closing song) where it's not as death or doom adjacent as I usually prefer my gothic metal to be. The amateurish vocals bring this down a bit--they're heavily accented, sometimes out of tune, and often feel silly and overdramatic, though they're serviceable enough of the time to be tolerable. Ths is a case where I really wish they had just used the backing growls as main vocals. Don't see myself spinning this one much, but I can't really complain about getting a rare gothic metal demo mCD for a buck.
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