Keyboards dominate most of the music, with unobtrusive guitars and drums usually just coming along for the ride and complementing the structure. The mostly snarled main vocals sometimes seem almost out of place given the nature of the music, but something had to establish a vague connection to black metal -- and clean singing would probably be less suitable anyway.

The thing with this album is that the sooner you stop thinking about it as being watered-down black metal, the sooner you'll begin to notice that the music is actually quite well done and enjoyable in its own way. On several occasions the song structures get a bit on the grating side, but if you approach it the right way, _Descension_ is actually a very decent album and worth a shot.