DEATHKNOWLEDGE & LIFEPERCEPTION

On top of his metal-leaning madness, Senmuth mastermind Valery Av has lately gone in a direction that favours his lighter side over the heaviness. Be it soothing ambient music, or daunting explorations into ancient culture, Senmuth always seems to be reinventing himself. 'Deathknowledge & Lifeperception' shows Senmuth picking up the reins of orchestral composition once again. While the quality starts to lag and decay towards the latter half of the album and the execution still suffers from the lack of any actual orchestra involved, this is a well-produced piece of work for Senmuth, and generally quite a step up in terms of composition.

First experimenting with symphonic/orchestral music a few years before with 'Summarium Symphony,' Senmuth shows a real step up from that album here. Although the majority of the sound here is created and arranged through the use of a computer and no orchestra was actually used here, things sound surprisingly authentic, although it's still clear that what the listener is hearing isn't real musicianship. For the sake of composition however, the majority of the music here seems to be thoughtfully composed, with enough complexity, depth of sound and subtlety to be worth quite a few listens.

Unlike 'Summarium Symphony' which suffered from a lack of variety in the tone, Senmuth has quite a wide range of both sound and mood here. 'Revival Of The Reason' opens the album with a melancholic sound, with bursts of optimism emerging sparsely throughout the strings-driven track. The other highlight 'Inaccessible Motive' is quite a bit darker in nature. Driven by a melody on the sitar, the song underlines the variety heard here, over orchestral works done in the past.

The only thing keeping me from calling this a 'great' album is the fact that the music begins to take a dive towards the latter half of the album. Things are still kept pleasant and functional in natrue, but the inspiration and grasp of melody seems to escape after the first few tracks, robbing 'Deathknowledge & LIfeperception' of being called a consistent and excellent piece of work. For what it's worth though, the album is quite a good listen, and this is an above-average work for the Russian one man act.

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