Of Shadows... and the Dark Things You Fear

When one thinks of German extreme metal, notably black metal, Cryptic Wintermoon is not a band that garners a lot of mention, praise, or attention. This is actually very unfortunate as this band, especially with this album "Of Shadows... and the Dark Things You Fear", embody a very high-quality sound and need to be exposed to a larger audience. With a sound in a similar vein to Dissection, Naglfar, Catamenia, and Lord Belial, Cryptic Wintermoon is able to craft an extremely melodic style of black metal and inject it with some hints of melodic death metal here and there for a very satisfying end result.

This is an album that, for many, would likely seem like a rip-off of any of the aforementioned bands in the first paragraph. Certain bands do tend to rip off Dissection openly (looking at you, Thulcandra, no matter how awesome you may be) but Cryptic Wintermoon does not seem to exist just as a tribute band. For me, when I hear this album, I don't think of Dissection. I only think of Cryptic Wintermoon, and that's completely fine with me. Stylistically, this album here is a solid mix of melodic black and death metal with hints of thrash thrown in here and there for good measure. This isn't an album that falls specifically into just one of these genres. Songs like "Bonegrinder 1916" are more of a standard Gothenburg-influenced melodic death sound, while "Thrashomatic Overdrive" actually does have a thrash-esque sound. The guitar work here is superb and extremely melodic, as well as catchy, but in a positive way.

"Portals of Nightfall" is my favorite track on this album. It has the best guitar work and sounds extremely influenced by the Gothenburg sound which, if done right, is absolutely wonderful. Just like it is here. My problem with some of these songs is that the black metal does seem to be turned down a bit. If they would have injected more of that sound that they had with their two previous albums, this could have been so much better. It's definitely still a great listen but really, it doesn't live up to its 100% full potential. But I digress, my apologies. One song that really works the black metal influence is "Synthetic God". This song is another of the album's highlights and after a sweet melodic death intro, blast beats come in and a superb blackened riff soars over everything. This song alternates between melodic death and black metal seamlessly and has some solid guitar soloing. "Grave Without a Name" is a song that really works the Dissection influence with the clean guitar moments and has some sick keyboard segments. This was actually the first song I heard from this band about six or seven years ago. The following track "Once.. in the Windblasted North" follows a very similar sound but is a bit longer and more epic in some ways.

This is not an album that deserves to go unnoticed. It still baffles me that Cryptic Wintermoon has been around since 1993, with their debut full-length coming out in 1999, and hardly anyone knows of their existence. Frankly, if it hadn't been for someone showing me this band, I probably never would have came across them on my own. They hardly ever get any mention on the internet anywhere. Regardless, I definitely recommend this record for anyone who is into a hyper-melodic mixture of black and death metal.