Review Summary: Although this album might leave its listeners with a feeling of incompletion, Zargof's "Departure for the Cosmic Twilight" is a blackened force to be reckoned with. It's too bad the band no longer makes music.
One hit wonder. In popular music, this term applies to an artist who receives very little mainstream recognition outside of one huge number one "hit" song. However, since most good metal lies well underneath the mainstream, there are very few one hit wonders that are truly metal. However, there is a certain trend in underground, lesser-known metal where a band will make an album under a name, and never do anything else again. One of the best example of this type of metal "one hit wonder" is the bombshell that was the progressive metal band Weakling, with their lone release "Dead as Dreams" from the year 2000.
Browsing on the Bandcamp website a week ago, I stumbled, as I tend to do, upon many great things. I was specifically looking for black metal, and found great music by bands like Obolus, Yayla, and Black Monolith, amongst others. However, there was one band in particular that struck me; a band that just so happened to be in the same boat as Weakling, being an awesome band that only released one incredible album before disappearing into the great abyss. This metallic one hit wonder was a Brazilian black metal band by the name of Zargof, with their 2004 release of "Departure for the Cosmic Twilight."
I was hooked from the get go; it was atmospheric black love from when I first sifted through the songs from this album, taking brief samples from the middle of each song. I had to download it; luckily, it was free through the bandcamp page (which I highly recommend you to visit). However, mere snippets from this album weren't enough to prepare me for the ludicrous amounts of awesomeness I was about to experience.
Without going into too much detail as to spoil the reader's surprise of their first listen to "Departure of the Cosmic Twilight," I'll give a brief guide of what to expect.
The basic go-to metal source that hails itself as "The Metal Archives" lists this album as symphonic black metal. The songs on this album do have that certain symphonic sound, and in entire passages of songs, the guitars do seem to take backseat to the synthesizers. For those who are turned off by the idea of synthesizers in metal music, tortured by bands who overzealously use them such as Children of Bodom and Dimmu Borgir, don't panic! Zargof hit an incredible balance with their synths, using them in such a way that it gives power and atmosphere to the song, without sounding incredibly cheesy and distracting in the process. The album has a somewhat lo-fi production - not quite as fuzzy as bands such as Midnight Odyssey or Paysage d'Hiver, but there is a certain level of fuzziness that adds to the specific, haunting atmosphere this album has to offer. I could say more on what this album sounds like, but there are things that I do not feel I could justify in words; aspects of this album that I feel are best experienced, not explained.
Now, you may be wondering to yourself, after giving such a glowing review of a truly amazing piece of black metal, why this album was given a mere 4.5 as opposed to the perfect 5. Well, unlike the aforementioned Weakling's massive release, Zargof's album was too short, leaving a certain sense of incompleteness at its conclusion. The first track is a short intro, the last track is a brief outro, and the three tracks in between are five to six minutes long. Thus, the only thing holding this album back from a perfect score is its disappointing lack of material, made more disappointing by the band's failure to produce more music.
In short, although this album is way too short for its own good, "Departure for the Cosmic Twilight" is an amazing black metal album with a haunting, symphonic atmosphere, and a cheap as free price tag. In my own personal experience, finding this album for free on bandcamp is something I am quite proud of, a mystical find in a sea of obscure black metal acts, not all of which are all that great!
