Mirrorthrone
Of Wind and Weeping
6.3
Mirrorthrone is a one-man project by a man named Vladimir. As one could guess, as with most one-man projects, it's a symphonic band. Mirrorthrone is heavy on the symphonic but adds black metal rawness to the mix. Vladmir handles all the keys, drum programming, guitars, bass, and vokills. He has a very strong clean voice. It has a very haunting tone to it, while his harsh vokills come across very raw giving a good balance of both sides of the spectrum. It wouldn't take anyone too long to figure out that these drums are programmed because they hit speeds where the double kicks seems to almost meld into one beat. His work on the keys is impressive. A lot of the stuff would fit great in a Castlevania game or a work as a soundtrack to a dark gothic movie. The keys spiral along in a very creepy manner quite often. I believe some of his best work on here is in the track "Aborted". It's one of the shortest tracks on the album, Of Wind and Weeping, but it also stands out as being one of the best. The guitars are pretty much straight-forward black metal riffing, no frills; that being mainly because they hardly ever provide the basis for the songs.
For the most part, I liked what was on this disc. I really loved the vokills. The clean ones are so haunting as I said above. To me, that was the strongest part of the album, along with the keyboard work. At times though I felt some of the songs seemed a bit dragged out. If you dig symphonic/gothic stuff this is definitely worth checking out, but for me I don't think I could pull this disc out too often.
