A debut release for both Witchcraft Productions and TWILIGHT IS MINE. The press sheet that came with the disc reads: "...Occult Elite Black metal for elite auditory" -- damn, it feels pretty good to consider yourself an elite audience =). But anyway, let's get to the release itself. The disc contains tracks recorded in 1996-97 that were previously unreleased. I must say, I've never had such mixed impressions. Sure, there have been times when my opinion of a band changed from song to song, but here my opinion shifted several times during a single track! So my verdict is far from unambiguous.
The album opens with two dark and bleak compositions -- "Intro" and "When the Twilight Covers the World." At first, the music struck me as fairly simple -- primitive, even -- and slow, but then a hurricane guitar solo suddenly appears, and everything sounds completely different. What deserves mention is the atmosphere. It truly is present: dark, cold, and bleak, though not always menacing. Presumably, to make it even more intense, they decided to add female vocals. And that's what spoiled the picture, especially in the song "Antihuman," which started out hard, fast, and furious, only for the female spoken-word delivery a la CRADLE OF FILTH to appear and ruin everything it possibly could.
Further on, in "Hail" and "Ragnarok!" clean male vocals periodically surface. Again, the song alternates between tearing you apart with its energy and boring you to tears. It feels as though the songs were recorded in parts at different times. The disc also features two doom/ambient compositions -- "To You, O Forest" and "Backwoods Dreams" -- and between them sits the excellent track "The Triumph," which, as far as I can judge with my three years of music school, incorporates excerpts from classical music =).
Overall, the album turned out well, especially for a first effort. The artwork is decent too -- I expected something far worse, frankly.