IN THE MIST OF MORNING

Having formed way back in 1999 it's taken Nordagust a long time to release their first album, In The Mist Of Morning coming out in 2010. The band come from Norway and their style of moody and atmospheric prog is inevitably going to draw comparisons with other Scandinavian bands like Anekdoten and Anglagard. In truth they don't particularly sound like these bands but would be nearer Anekdoten than Anglagard and share Anekdoten's heavy use of the Mellotron.

While I enjoy the album I do find that to a large extent, stylistically there's not a lot of musical variation between the ten compositions. The music throughout sticks to a sedate pace and is fairly simply structured. Overall it's pretty dark sounding, very moody and atmospheric with suitably angsty vocals, though I have to admit they grate a bit at times. Despite the lack of complexity, which even for a prog fan is not necessarily a bad thing, the music contains some haunting melodies that get under the skin and any band that wants to rely on such heavy use of the Mellotron is alright with me. Their music is equally defined by some searing guitar work which is perhaps the highlight of the album.

In all, In The Mist Of Morning while no doubt being a good album suffers from a lack of diversity which makes me wonder how the band can grow in the future without going off on a totally different tangent. I'll certainly be interested to see however and hope album number two doesn't take as long to arrive.