Throw in some Sanskrit, Hieroglyphs and ancient Semitic languages (ancient Hebrew, maybe?) into that cauldron, and there you have it; the almost perfect introduction to Black Seas of Infinity's sonic and visual aesthetics, or so the artist behind BSoI wishes you to believe.

BSoI deal with the feminine half of nature, the sinistra, the left hand path, or the Amarita -- the Sanskrit word that loosely translates to a life-giving nectar of the female, or so I've read. Yes, we have all read Dan Brown's _The DaVinci code_; we all know about the masculine versus the feminine side of nature / religion / the universe; Yin and Yang and all that. Nothing too far fetched, really.

The million dollar question is: how does the artist transform those extremely elaborate and profound ideas from philosophy to a coherent sonic expression, in the form of music? What is his vision for an aural equivalent to those grand themes? This reviewer does not think _Amarita - The Quintessence_ has anything to offer in the sense of a successful transduction of BSoI's ostentatious occult / metaphysical ideas into an up to par musical counterpart.

Dark ambient ritualistic -music- should be as its description suggests: generating dark atmosphere, inducing ritualistic state of mind. BSoI, although succeeding in performing some trance-like moments filled with eerie sounds and mystery, focus on circular movements that revolve around themselves ad infinitum in endless loops. Most of the -music- here ultimately reminds me someone who pushed the auto pilot button and just left the room, leaving the same track to its fate, to be played and repeated until there is nobody to hear it anymore.

As with most of recent Autumn Wind Productions' roster, the better albums this label has been releasing are oddly also the more accessible ones. _Amarita - The Quintessence_ is no exception to that rule; it is fairly accessible, more listenable than most of the lot released by Autumn Winds in recent years (the other better albums which could be actually enjoyed are the Drear / Great American Desert split, Vomit Orchestra's _Macabre Paradigm_ and Arbeit's debut reviewed on CoC just recently, to name but three) and has got some interesting ideas here and there.

In the end, I don't see a real valid reason why anyone should waste more than an hour of their lives on this recording. There are better dark / ritual ambient albums out there, which are far superior to this mediocrity. Seek them out!