Damokles

I never would have thought I'd find a worthwhile band on myspace, but behold, I find Hidden in the Fog, a symphonic black metal band with prog thrown into the mix. It is quite a change-up, but the band makes the two sounds meld quite well and flow very smoothly.

First thing that I point out, is the vocals, when I first heard them it was typical black metal vocals, nothing to write home about, but than the clean vocals came in, and I was very pleasently surprised. The vocalist has a very good, warm, majestic sound to his clean vocals, and when used, they always add a large amount of atmosphere to the sound, sometimes even just used as a backing instrument. Very very good.

Second, the guitar, while still keeping to typical black metal parts with tremolo picking or minor chords, they also sometimes get quite techinical! With both guitarists doing different things, sometimes harmonizing, sometimes two seperate things at once. They also have a great, heavy tone. Also, there are acoustic jazzy parts in some songs, and they have a very good clean tone as well. The guitarists know what they're doing.

The bass, well, you can't hear it to much except for when it goes into jazzy parts, but the bassist does his job, and does it well, no complaints here.

The drummer is very good, doing a good job of playing fast and simple when he needs to, but not holding back at doing techinical drumwork, with some fancy cymbalwork and strange timing. Very good work.

However though, with all those good points, you'd think there'd be nothing wrong, but yet, there is. Hidden in the Fog has the problem of sometimes sounding TO MUCH like newer era Emperor. Sometimes I could swear their synth is the exact same that Emperor used in Anthems, as well. The other complaints, is that some parts, while interesting to the ear first time through, end up sounding more like filler, with guitars just droning on with fun little diddlys that really serve no purpose to the song. They don't really hurt it or help it, it's just pointless at times.


With all that being said and done, Hidden in the Fog is a VERY good band, and young as well, I highly recommend it to anyone interested in symphonic black metal that isn't afraid to break from the mold of drowning the listener in keys and boring tremolo picked riffs.