MICROCOSMOS

After great debut album "Sublunary Tragedies", group coming back with fresh and very experimental material, without loosing their black metal roots at the same time. Sometimes it's very hard to classify this album, music here in general doesn't fit to any progressive sub-genere, during listening can be noticed a evolution of their music. Kind of progress, that some groups reaching during 10 years of activity, creativity of band members is on the top.

Tracks 1-5 are dominated by black metal sounds easly compareable to previous album, but with distinct progressive extras. Attachment of electronic experiments, lush keyboard solos in background, pleasant calm moments between haevier parts, that oddly fiting perfectly whole composition, unexpected reversals in tempo and instrumentarium building a new image of Thy Catafalque, as a band focused on art metal . Nothink more deceptive! The sixth track "Fehérlófia" can astonish somebody used to style presented on first five tracks, here appears folk metal, great combination of accoustic, strong electric guitar and violin, this one shows versatility of musicans and composers. "Micro To Macro" is instrumental the shortest track, frankly, it's hard to describe it, as i'm prog fan since long time, never heard somethink even similar. This song apart, would be ignored by me, i'm almost sure about that. During listening album from first to last track, when it's part of whole album, it seems to be a boarderline between old and new music experiences. "Panta Rhei" isn't last track, but really sounds like completion of album. Wonderful work on drums and fantastic keyboards background, materpice of experimental metal music. "Panta Rhei" could be a answer for question:" what if Vangelis/Klaus Shulze would be a metalhead". Time for a deep breath, "Októberi Kép"- mellow instrumental composition before final "Desolation", the longest track here, begining with stuning guitar playing, that reminds Pink Floyd, but containing much more dark atmosphere. It's also wonderful pice of music, very touchful piano and guitar perfectly closing album.

Imo no weak points, black metal, folk metal, experimental music and electronic experminets in very good style, made this album essential for me. I realise that some metal/progressive music fans, can be disapointed by this variety, i have to admit that "Microcosmos" doesn't sounds like a album created by one band, rather like 3 bands without any connection put randomly few tracks and they recorded an album, but one think is stable, dark and depressive atmosphere, ambitious compositions. Self realeased "Microcosmos" deserves full 5 stars, imo essential with no doubts.

This self-released album from the duo of project leader Tamás Kátai and guitarist János Juhász offers an impressively forward-thinking take on avant-garde black metal, the sound veering between roaring black metal fury, folky interludes and gentle electronic twinkling with an impressive smoothness. The production, especially for a self- released album, is impressively nuanced, going polished when polish would bring out the best in the music and lo-fi when a bit of raw, rough about the edges chaos is called for. It's an intriguing piece which has prompted me to look again at Thy Catafalque, and which deserves wider attention for the extent to which it still manages to be well ahead of the curve even compared to recent experimental black metal.