Arcane Art - Nightly Terrors

Well this is a strange one. Karsten Hamre (in yet another guise) teams up with Ciprian Prastagus (of the little known "Let Shadows Feed My Dark") to release poetic transient mourning.

Whether or not it breaks from the obligatory and near-redundant Karsten sound and offers us something more exclusive is yet to be seen, but within the next few hundred words, the answer shall be revealed.

Much of Karsten's recorded output is very lo-fi, but is held together by feeling and emotion. The opening intro to the album is a short and repetitive collage of slow drums and spacial textures. Nothing to remember, but how many ambient intros are amazing?

There is a hint of romantic prose here, but a very loud and chaotic performance of violent grating and drum noises overtake the music, and the first full track sadly leaves me feeling cold.

The interesting three minute Interlude also breaks from tradition, and rather than give us a short bit of peaceful composition, we get treated to three minutes of basic and warped synth loops. I'm trying very hard to like this, and it may have merit, but it doesn't do anything like I expected it to at all.

"Sell Your Soul" is a nice track, and the first saving grace of the release. Nice Industrial bass, and if it was sped up tenfold, this could be a big hit on the dancefloors. Adopting a darkwave scenario once again, this track is respectively just a looped sixty seconds, but it is considerably better than its predecessors.

"Morbid Ana" isn't too bad either. Dark and Threatening, (and is the title a reference to Anorexia?)
Those of you still reading this wall of badly constructed tripe will be pleased to know that there are other highlights on here too - I don't feel listing them would be anything more than a waste of time, I am far too busy trying to find the supposed "Nightly Terrors" that the cd claims to unleash.

A mention has to go to "The Reckoning" - why does every track with this title slaughter? The first track on Godhead's "2000 Years of Human Error" shares its name with this track, and that is a perfect club stomper. Tradition is broke - this is a whimpering track, almost ready to break out and scream, but it's really part of a sequence of filler material, with a voice, but no power behind it.

Closing track "Chaotic Breed" is actually the best track on here, and in age old fashion, Karsten "Saves the best to last". Inevitably, at Eleven minutes the track crashes and burns towards the end.

Let it be known I am not here to play Executioner, or to offer advice to any musicians about their output. I honestly feel this album could become so much more, and could actually be one of the better releases on the market - there's just something missing, and I am damned if I know what it is.

Fans of the genre can do worse, the few really good tracks on here are worth hearing. Nov 03 2006