Sorcier des Glaces - Snowland
Review: From the land of graceful frosty metal Sorcier Des Glaces create an epic from the primitive elements of black metal styled in majestically sparse leads and pouring liquid arpeggiated melodic spread playing which accelerates mood elements revealed in song to a tightly balanced conclusion within dissonant or consonant resolution, revealing melodies in staggered tiers of a trellised structure concentrating on a core distillation of simple motions between large interval gaps and simple, often chromatic intervals, in variation to produce an effect of motion through modal consistency within slight dissonance or barely consonant tonal context. The result is the desired "sweeping" effect of metal racing through either fast two- and three-note riffs or long-phrase melodies unfurling in arpeggiated capture of vast harmonic space, then counterbalancing this in theme to conclude a brief narrative in apocalyptic difference, even in the consonant phrasing which opposes the conclusion of themes declared in distinct enmity for all time.
Advanced perception of death and space is granted by this technique applied successfully with an understructure of carefully atmospheric percussion emphasizing the stomp techniques used well in Norway, here given a liberation with their pure primitivism, accompanying the vocal which undulates between variations on styles within the metal and a harsh, raw, gutter version of gothic that might have been what The Exploited actually wanted on "Horror Epics." Emergent melody and interludes of sonorous completion express a great satisfaction in darkness, and the existential wanderings set into pace by whipping phrase of wrist against alternating chords and vast rippled transitions of violent playing. While some rockish elements emerge toward the latter half of the demo, these are muted by a grand sense of the epic in spatial arrangement between themes and use of texture in phrasing, mated to an awareness of dynamic made fluid in rhythmic pacing designed for motion impact. Almost twisted in the grandeur of its bare form, this music belongs with early Emperor and Auzhia and Yamatu for its morbid gothic entrancement of life and death into oblivion and from that, toward towering worlds of conjecture made physical by the raw motion and patterning of the music.
1. L'enchantement Des Glaces (3:53)
2. The Winter Nightsky (4:09) 
3. Pure Northern Landscape Desolation (6:42)
4. Onward into the Crystal Snows (5:35)
5. My Journey Into The Black Forest (6:07)
6. Darkness Covers The Snowland (2:34)
7. L'Èternelle Majesté Des Montagnes (5:19)
8. Night Throne (4:35)
Since "melodic black metal" has become a catchword for Iron Maiden clones, it is fair to note that there is none of that here. The essence of black metal as youth reclaiming the ability to think from a world of neurosis is present here in deconstructive elements of style, balanced by an immense push toward aspiration in dream and creation as rendered through longer phrases and more classically-influenced structures in riff and song spanning a length constituting an attention deficit for most people. In this elitism prevails throughout the attitudes and conceptual stances required to mold this wrenching minimal and esoterically perverse music that creates an atmosphere of vast emptiness and cold in which only spirits of great power can exist.