Metal Reviews

www.myspace.com/neobliviscaris

nifty australian blackened prog band with a violinist who has some really cool interplay with the lead gutiarist. kinda reminds me a little of enslaved or borknagar... thoughts?

I think it's perhaps hard to know what to think of bands like this. It seems to be in right now to take a bunch of elements, throw them in a blender, and then spit something out that "defies the imagination" whether it really has any substance or not (let alone quality songwriting). The "black metal" moments here are particularly weak and that they even refer to their music as being affiliated with black metal seems like a pretty dubious claim (or maybe we just have some Myspace author to thank for that, along with quite a bit of pretentiousness).

None of the vocalists are impressive either and that hurts quite a bit given that their use of several (vocal) styles only draws even more attention to them. And that's hard for me, because I don't have to have a vocalist that's technically sound or even very "good" by any standard, but when they jump out at me I need to at least find them passable and not distracting.

I don't think they sounded like a collage of different elements. I agree about the black metal part; their sound has some BM, but not really all that much, which is why I called them blackened progressive metal instead of artsy black metal ^___^

I've heard lots of complaints about the singers (especially the clean vocalled guy) but imo they're both pretty good... not amazing, but solid. The cheesy myspace sales pitch is pretty lame though

I was mostly responding to the way they portray themselves or are portrayed on the site, not your description.