EMPTINESS WITHIN

Having gone on a hiatus from full-length releases in favour of shorter EP experiments, the dark ambient project Misanthrofeel is back with another development in it's sound. This time focusing more on the ambient side of things over the heavier 'metal' sound, 'Emptiness Within' is without a doubt the mysterious composer's most professional full- length effort to date, although some of the work's more adventurous samples end up coming across as somewhat tacky.

While all of the instruments here are completely virtual, Misanthrofeel makes the right decision here to go for a more ambient and electronic approach over the doom/ethnic metal roots, which made Misanthrofeel's music feel more like a GuitarPro file than a finished product. However, unlike 'XII-XIII-XIV' (his purely ambient EP released in 2010), there are still some traces of a metal sound. Many of the tracks are very minimalistic, although effective in the way they slowly build. While Dmitry (the man behind this work) is indeed a good composer and has shown as much throughout his time working under the Misanthrofeel pseudonym, the music here focuses much more on the way he is able to arrange different sounds together on the computer. The result is ultimately mixed.

Many of the songs here almost feel like short auditory films; they give a very vivid mental image that is usually tied in with the title. 'Nightmares' for example sounds like it's scoring a gothic horror film, whilst 'On The Shore' takes us to some dark and tattered beach. The music and vibe throughout is consistently dark and filled past the brim with despair. While this does work well to some extent in many of the songs, it can get overbearing to the point where it's hard to take the atmosphere of the music seriously. The legitimate album closer 'Ortni' for example, features a repetitive machine gun firing sound, along with a dog whimpering, and a woman crying throughout the second half of the track. Unfortunately, Misanthrofeel lacks the darkness necessary to make subject matter like this really work.

While this is far from the best thing Misanthrofeel has released musically, it does show a very profound development in his sound, especially when looking back at the rather raw and unpolished demo. However, a return to the beautiful, intricate compositions of 'Sampleria' would be very welcomed, albeit with the new, more computer-oriented and professional sound arrangements this Russian artist now employs.

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