Cost: $1.00
I was expecting much worse from the generic band name, album title, and "logo." The core of this is black metal, but the lead guitar stands out as being extremely prominent and unusually proficient for this style, with lots of shreddy soloing. There's plenty of keyboard usage, which ranges from somewhat cheap sounding gothic metal-esque flourishes to more subdued synths reminiscent of mid '90s atmospheric BM. Together with the guitarwork, the keys often give the music a very strong neoclassical feel. Going even further, the final instrumental bonus track dispenses with the black metal entirely and is pure prog./power metal.
Initially I found the flashier guitarwork quite appealing, as it's a genuine difference from your typical Nordic BM clone. Nothing really stuck out as being terribly memorable, though--without the guitar and keyboard flourishes, I don't think there's much of note in the underlying music. Musically, it is literally a power/neoclassical metal guitarist dropped into a black metal band, although it avoids being the terrible genre mashup trainwreck that may sound like.
