’I am scared to death to fall in love,’ admits HIM’s front man Ville Valo on second track “Scared To Death”. To understand the irony of that statement, one must be familiar with HIM and have had listened to some of the band’s previous albums from the past. All throughout their career as a band, Finnish rockers HIM have crafted albums that all center around the lyrical subjects of darkness, vampires, and love. With varying ways as to how they approach each album musically, whether commercial or more aggressive in nature, the band have always held strong to their paradox blend of lyrical s[......]

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Across The Rubicon is a Polish newborn band with members of Cold Fusion and Rukkanor (among others). It has just issued its first album of 10 neoclassical martial industrial assaults. At the first look, we gaze at the simple yet so efficient design of the booklet: beautiful blue/grey pictures, cloudy skies, marmoreal coldness and uncertain harvest… The quality of the music however is rather a certainty!

“Soldat Inconnu” is introduced with a sample of a French military song: sadly the quality sounds to be a bit 128 kbp/s, but it isn’t that noticeable and it just has not[......]

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Now I am a firm believer that first records play with advantage. I am considering here ‘Berlin’ an extension of ‘Nera’, but the explanation of my previous statement is pretty obvious. Say when you write your first record you are 25 years old. It means you’ve had all that time, in one way or another, to be influenced by various things, to explore, discover, listen, silence. It means that you have a clear idea of what you want your project to sound. Basically this way I want to defend two postures. The first one is that the second record is mainly the most difficult. The second is that, frankly,[......]

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Dargaard was founded by Tharen in 1997. Tharen had already played a prominent role in several underground bands by this time, including Abigor and Amestigon, both black metal bands and Dominion III, an industrial music act. Tharen was the keyboard player in Abigor, but Amestigon, Dominion III and Dargaard are entirely his projects. Dargaard was born out of Tharen’s desire to move away from black metal and express himself through more ambient and classical music.

Also joining the band was Elisabeth Toriser as vocalist. Elisabeth was also the vocalist in Dominion III and was also involved [......]

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Ave Imperator, morituri te salutant. So creep Triarii on ‘Pièce Héroique’, their cindery follow-up to ‘ars militaria’, a triumphal arch of bombast and orchestral swells limned with choir and dark vocals. Encapsulating the Trajan typeface dominating the album’s cover in strong caps – puissant blocks of line, crisp geometrically carved serifs, and curving harmonic arches – so enfolds the music that launches with the opening track, ‘Le Crépuscule Des Dieux’. Accentuating a dark glory of Empire strings lend the air minatory aplomb, marching without percussion usher arteries of choir and strings o[......]

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