IN DARKNESS THEY WHISPER

This album is quite an octopus! Metaphysical, cosmological, lyrics branded with Lovecraft's occultism, space rock combined to epic prog and silvered with metal, an international line up with musicians from Russia, Italy, USA, UK (Cyndee Lee Rule on space violin) and Denmark, bits of stardust with members of Hawkwind (Davey, Turner) and so on! The list of performers is long and somehow the resulting collective work gives you an impression of overload. Add that the production also tends at times to the same, with too many things at once, tons of delays, echoes, whirlwinds of this and that, etc... You think it's the end? Well it isn't! Add again on top of all the previous long and unending jam-packed improvs! It's somehow a shame because there are good things out there, moments drowned in and struggled by the cosmic plasma; nuances, the balance of instruments in the ... huum can't avoid it .... SPACE!!, all this disappear in favour of the quantity of food cast at you ONCE with one huuuuuge tentacular spoon ... eat, eat, eat more and now eat! There's plenty of acid nutritionals .... enough to hollow your brain! When THIS happens, you may only have reached half of the record!!!! I give three stars but it would be more 2½ if this option was there!

This fourth album of the international music collective lead by charming Ms. Alisa Coral continues voyaging trough hallways shadowed by heavy guitar walls and celestial synthesizer tapestries. Like their earlier record, "In Darkness They Whisper", the album has a compact theme, directing now to the cosmic horrors familiar from H.P. Lovecraft's literature. Stylistically the album blends some energetic heavy rock themes, spaced out tunnelings reminding Hawkwind's harder moments, and also some quite chaotic sequences of terror and dramatic confusion. Song durations run between three and seven minutes, final epic escaping over twenty minutes of length. This last suite "The Dreamquest of Unknown Kadath" was my own highlight on the album, though the other songs are carefully composed and arranged also - I wonder if any other orientation would be even possible in this kind of remote music creation process. Though the album ventures slightly out of my own sphere of musical taste due the descriptive style of lyrics, heavy metal idioms on drums and guitar solos and latency of aggression, I am happy to hear what these talented musicians and kind people have been focusing to; This referred congregation of musicians assembles together no less than four guitarists, from them most familiar to me being Sparky Simmons due his group AcidFM - a group which shared a side with Space Mirrors on their split vinyl single. From the spaceship Hawkwind's crew this trek is joined by Alan Davey, convincing with his firm bass lines, and Nik Turner on saxophone, flute and clarinet, whirling the gust of old school space rock spirit to the troubling winds storming on this cosmic heavy rock record. Cyndee Lee Rule is also present with her atmospheric violin textures, and Martyr Lucifer earns his name with narrative vocal descriptions. Synthesizers are played also by Alen Welty and Bjørn Jeppesen in addition of Alisa, whose expertise on playing, project management and both recordings and electronic technics are evident trough the integrity of album's overall sound. She also has recorded the drums with electronics, and from my own subjective musical taste perspective this coolness shimmering frome machine-borne drumming lowered slightly the listening enjoyment. This solution worked very well on their second record, more ethereal "Memories of The Future", which has so far remained as my own favorite Space Mirrors album - though the albums evolve further musically, I believe this personal factor relies on the spacious vastness I sensed from that older record. About percussions, I believe that closer to organic progressive heavy music the approach gets, more likely there may be difficulties related to synchronizing real drumming for production realized in different countries. What I have understood from the promotional excerpts, there should be however mostly real drums played on the fifth Space Mirrors album been released on time of this writing, and possibly allowing yet more rewarding end results.. "The Other Gods" continues also studies of Lovecrafian sci-fi horror mythos. So I would recommend this album to listeners of heavier progressive space rock, and along with the recent record this band might be interesting group for checking out by any Lovecraft enthusiast.