PNEUMA

The music on the album is in quite an eclectic progressive extreme metal style, that may be somewhat rooted in black metal but travels far beyond the usual boundaries of the genre and greatly challenges the genre characteristics of that style. Warm vintage sounding keyboards/organ, progressive song structures, 70s hard rock influences, psychadelic elements, a blackened rock´n´roll touch (just listen to the main riff in "Against the Curse, We Dream" or "Haire Pneuma Skoteino") and just a general playfullness that´s greatly charming. A band like Enslaved comes to mind, but Hail Spirit Noir has a kind of freakshow/dark carnival atmosphere present in their music that is far removed from the more serious sounding Norwegians. The vocals on "Pneuma" are, in addition to the adventurous instrumental part of the music, one of the great assets of the album. the blackened raspy harsh type vocals and the commanding powerful clean vocals are both delivered with great conviction and skill.

The album features 6 tracks distributed over a 36:57 minutes of playing time, so it´s safe to say it´s not a very long album. I´d take quality over quantity any day though and there´s plenty of quality here to justify the relatively short playing time. "Pneuma" is simply an enjoyable album from beginning to end (the only exception being the 4 minute ambient/noise ending to "Into the Gates of Time", which to my ears is wasting precious playing time). A 4.5 star (90%) rating is fully deserved.

Share this HAIL SPIRIT NOIR review

Social review comments () BETA

---

---

Review related links

• Send comments to UMUR
• Report this review (#792486)
• Buy HAIL SPIRIT NOIR music online with PA partners
• Show all HAIL SPIRIT NOIR MP3/Stream
• Go to HAIL SPIRIT NOIR page for videos, full discography with ratings, reviews and much more
• Go to Pneuma page for more details, where to buy and ratings/reviews
• Search the Forum for HAIL SPIRIT NOIR related discussions