CoC : De Infernali - Symphonia De Infernali : Review

De Infernali - _Symphonia De Infernali_
(Nuclear Blast, 1997)
by: Adam Wasylyk (4 out of 10)

With this being the side project of Dissection's Jon Nodtveidt, I was expecting something much better than what came out of my speakers. It could be said that there are two halves to this release; half of it being instrumental/keyboard tracks, the other half being industrial techno. On _Symphonia De Infernali_, a pattern arises: musically, it shifts from keyboard track to techno track to keyboard track and so on. This meant with every track it went from good to bad to good and so on. The keyboard pieces (like "Into the Labyrinths of Desolation", "Orcus Cursus", and "Rivival/...") are well composed and thought out, but what was Jon thinking with techno dribble like "Ave Satan", "Sign of the Dark" and "Atomic Age", which sounded so contrived it wasn't funny? I'm not even going to talk about the last track, entitled "X". This is so bad, maybe this explains why Jon Nodtveidt's name is nowhere to be found in the CD sleeve????

(article published 1/1/1998)