Wilt

Atmospheric black metal is something that's hard to discuss properly. Whether or not something has atmosphere is all subjective and it's up to the listener to determine whether it has atmosphere. This EP definitely has some sort of atmosphere, and it's the same sort of "walking through a cold forest" setting, but it failed to hold my attention for very long.

When you put the first song "Autumn Veil" on, it gives you a good punch in the face and gives you an outline of what's to come for the rest of the duration of the EP. It's got the cold, raw production that black metal is known for, with extremely distorted guitars and surprisingly audible bass. The bass doesn't seem to be doing anything but following the guitar work. The guitar work is rather stale, it doesn't seem to be going anywhere and can get almost nauseatingly boring. The drum work isn't that tight, but it fits the music very well. The next song "Cold Misfortune" is completely forgettable in my opinion, because it sounds just like "Autumn Veil".

There also seems to be this doom metal vibe as well, because there are certain sections of this EP that drag on really slowly and can take forever to get through, it's almost hypnotic and it's very hard to keep attentive to sections like the 8-minute mark on the song "Empyrean".

The vocal work is very well done, the frigid rasp definitely fits the atmosphere and the doomy, depressive repetitive guitars (as annoying as the guitars are). The echo effect that Wilt put on the vocals is as chilling as the setting this puts you into.

I can only recommend this to people who have a true passion for atmospheric black metal and like hypnotic music without having to worry about how good the instrumentation is.