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In Reverie demo CD 2002
classification: gothic black metal
1: Crimson over Frozen
Fields
2: The Craving for Oblivion
3: Portae lucis
4: As Orpheus Condemned
line-up:
Stefan Terlouw (bass)
Bas Polder (drums)
Arno van de Reep (guitars)
Sander van Helvoort (vocals)
Dennis Alma (vocals)
     
Review: IO is a gothic
black metal band, that definitely gets an A on design:
the semi-transparent cover looks really stylish. The
music of the band is pretty good, even though most gothic
black I heard left no traces of its existence in my head.
A little over 25 minutes of atmosphere packed into four
tracks, and musicianship that is better than most young
black metal bands achieve. This is pretty doomy and
melancholic, with hints of Katatonia, Dimmu Borgir (Stormblåst)
and Opeth, and probably a lot more I don't recognise (my
knowledge of this type of moody metal is limited). The
songs are built up well and all have their own face,
which keeps this record from growing boring. Critique?
Well, the clean vocals need practise, some
experimentation with singing harmonies would do the music
good for instance, and the drums are a bit too soft to
keep your attention. The last point is perhaps not that
bad, because it keeps the music calm and sad. I think
that, in its own niche of doomy black, IO is quality
work, and even people into CoF can find solace here.
Underground black metal it's definitely not!
Source: Black Art Magazine #6, 2003.
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