Akathartos – First Nightmare (CD Mini-Album – Akathartos)
Genre/Influences: Orchestral electro-industrial, symphonic & electronic.
Content: Akathartos is a new Finnish solo-project dealing with a hard to define music genre. The band claims to be inspired by artists like Hans Zimmer, Suicide Commando, Wumpscut, Hocico and orchestral-, metal- and industrial ensembles.
This debut work features 6 songs taking off in a rather cinematographic style revealing epic- and symphonic arrangements plus some chants. It sounds like an intro and a promising debut.
The next song coming up is a bit weirder in sound. There’s a mix of dark-electro ingredients, which sound rather rough and under-produced, and symphonic passages. This is not exactly about duality, but simply two different songs running through each other.
The next few songs are suffering from a similar construction. The epic- and symphonic input is not bad at all while reinforced by male- and female chants. It sounds like an interesting cinematographic adventure, but the dark-electronics are hard to understand.
The last two songs reveal a similar approach and construction in sound, but Akathartos here seems to have found the formula to bring both influences together. I can’t say that it’s fully convincing, but a song like “Calling Of Dying” is somewhat encouraging for the future. This is a more successful osmosis between the drama and sorrow emerging from the epic passages on one side and the harder electronic layer on the other. “My Time Will Come” sounds a bit similar and we here even can speak about certain harmony between the different sources of inspiration.
Conclusion: Akathartos definitely tries to take the listener by surprise by mixing opposites with each other, but still has to find the right balance.
Best songs: “Calling Of Dying”.
Rate: (DP:5)DP.
Band: www.akathartos.com / www.facebook.com/akathartos
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I have been working for over 30 years with Side-line as the main reviewer. My taste is eclectic, uncoventional and I prefer to look for the pearls, even if the bands are completely unknown, thus staying loyal to the Side-Line philosophy of nurturing new talents.
