CoC : Grabesmond - Mordenheim : Review

Grabesmond - _Mordenheim_
(Draenor Productions, 1997)
by: Henry Akeley (4 out of 10)

Here we have 13 synthesizer pieces which are supposed to represent "all which can be linked with the realms of darkness, the hidden and unknown beings, and forces of night" -- and which end up sounding more like a CD full of song introductions than an album's worth of self-standing compositions. This isn't garbage or anything, but I can't see why anyone would choose Grabesmond over the much more distinctive and developed efforts of similarly-styled artists like Mortiis, The Soil Bleeds Black, Proscriptor, and so on. Some of the individual pieces have a nice nocturnal charm, but most are simply too short to harbor any musical development or create any real atmosphere. More to the point, these works all come across, to me anyway, as rudimentary and fairly generic exercises in keyboard-craft, with nothing original or individual that might set them apart from the thousands of other unremarkable synth pieces which have appeared on many a metal album of late. Neither especially dark nor especially ambient -- nor especially recommended.

(article published 1/1/1998)