The debut album for this German band, where we can find no less than 3 DARK FORTRESS members, has finally been released. It seems this has been delayed from 2006 until now. Was it worth? Well, not so much I am afraid. No matter that most of the members are in the melodic Black Metal band already mentioned, the style here is different. This is mostly some weird kind of technical extreme Metal music, reminiscent of DARKANE, and at times to later EMPEROR although not as catchy or interesting. The vocals range from the common Thrash / raspy ones to more sung out, but they tend to sound the same after a while, and actually takes away some power from some songs. The problem is that they try to do a lot of things in the songs and they all sound like a collection of riffs. I can sense a mid-era VOIVOD influence (the spacey kind of touch) on some songs like in ‘Coming In Tongues’. Again, it is hard to catch a song as a whole, as they try to make things damn way too complex and at the end, the only thing they create is quite too damn complex and gets the listener to get tired to be honest. The length of most of the songs doesn’t help either. Yes, this gets a very good production, the musicians are really good, but it is the composition that actually lacks strength. I appreciate the fact that the band does not care for what others think of their music, but unless you like your Metal “weird” with some “spacey-semi-progressive” elements, I would suggest to look somewhere else. The band states that their goal is to make great music, not bizarre music. Well, they are still on the bizarre stage for now. www.merciless-records.de, www.noneuclid.com