Review Summary: Confusion and isolation in a yucky green cosmos...
As you can probably deduce from the track list,
Worlds Beyond the Veil is a cosmic journey to an entirely different realm, which - for the convenience of your interpretation – is depicted on the visuals of the artwork to your right: spacey, green, and rather bizarre. Certainly, their music seems to draw us into precisely that realm; after the first track establishes the cosmic parameters of our journey, listeners are blasted by their atmospheric yet technical riffs into an otherworldly soundscape for the rest of the album. There are several moments of beauty in the album where we can feel and visualize the cosmic sphere, moments which truly reward the listener for finding this small-label record. But unfortunately, there are far too many random meandering solos and ambient passages in this album that makes us feel that this album may not be a journey, and more likely an exhaustive isolation in a bizarre Mithras-cosmos for more than an hour until you puke.
I was left quite bewildered on my first spin; with brutal riffs, unrelenting blast beats, and spot on atmosphere all occasionally present in this album, how can it be such an exhausting miss? I listened closer to their sound, and I think I found the answer. Let me elaborate. With an experimental attitude (Mithras is labeled as an experimental DM band), Mithras attempts to catch two birds with one stone in this album, as sound stylistics goes: it attempts to grasp both an ambient sound and a brutal sound. While Mithras is largely successful, it is successful in a sense that it now has two types of sounds that overpower each other in the album, leaving most of the listeners who probably can’t tolerate the alternating struggle of domination between these sound-styles (assumptions) rather confused and frustrated for the hour. Furthermore, with some sub-par songwriting which frequently involves extended sessions of meandering and with the continuously unrelenting blast beats (which I later discovered to be triggered drums…:/), the album makes a confusing, exhaustive 1 hour sound-prison in this green (eww) cosmos. Fortunately if you do get tired there’s always a stop button.
Of course - on a positive note - if you’re experimental and can handle these two dominant sounds at once, this album is a real treat for you because truly, there are moments of absolute, monolithic beauty of this green cosmos that will leave you speechless. I could comprehend it to a certain extent, but overall, the feeling of isolation, confusion, and exhaustion leaves this on borderline 3/3.5. Making an unfair comparison to Blut Aus Nord’s dialogue with the stars here, I personally think they would have done much better sticking with a more ambient sound than extreme metal with triggered drums, but that’s entirely up to you to decide (you may even think the opposite: that they would have done better sticking to more br0000tal and less atmosphere).
Verdict:
-Fans of either death metal (i.e brutality) or black metal / post / doom / etc (i.e. atmosphere), I definitely recommend giving this album a try.
-Fans of metal who would like some experimental stuff after listening to same-ish music over and over again, I also recommend this.
-Oh and I forgot to mention,
fans of Morbid Angel (i.e. a LOT of you DM listeners), I heard that this band has heavy influence from them, so definitely give this a try if you like Morbid Angel.
3.25/5.
