Ipsum
Mystic Evilution
7.1
Switzerland's Ipsum play a style of black metal that toes the line between brutality and melody. I suppose it could be classified as very-melodic black metal, with touches of death and doom metal sprinkled throughout - a real metal amalgamation. The most unexpected aspect of Ipsum is not just that they've got a few female members, but that the band is actually the creation of guitarist Sarah. It's nice to see ladies getting involved in extreme music.
The vocals of Michelle are downright mean. They are pretty standard for the black metal genre, but the inevitable comparisons will be made to Arch Enemy's Angela Gossow. So, Michelle's vox are a little deeper and fuzzy, while being just a little more toned down than Angela's. The riffage of Sarah and Laurent is creative and always searching for some undiscovered melody. The rhythm section gets the job done, and the drumming avoids the trap of overusing the blastbeat. The production is certainly good enough, and while it fuzzes over the vocals a bit, the rest of the instruments are mixed clearly.
Mystic Evilution opens up on a doomy note with New Model Inferno. Meandering leads control this song, evolving from doomy to Gothenburg to folky without missing a beat. Silent Skies follows the same formula, but the heaviness is up a few notches. On the other hand, some songs take too long to get moving. Take for example, My End: the song takes a good half a minute to develop into something interesting. The other four songs on Mystic Evilution are pretty similar in style and composition.
The one gripe I have with Ipsum's latest is that for all the fine riffs I'm hearing, the songs aren't put together at that high a level of quality. It's as if Ipsum has all of the ingredients, but they just didn't mix the batter as thoroughly as possible. Thus, the songs sound fine while listening to them, but 10 minutes later, I'd be hard-pressed to recall more than a few moments. While that is a minor detraction, there is plenty of solid, melodic black metal to be had on Mystic Evilution. If you're intrigued, go sample the free mp3s from their website, I'm sure some of our fine readers will dig Ipsum.
