Conor Fynes 'The Sinister Alliance' - Shining (5/10)

Unlike other splits that Shining has done, 'The Sinister Alliance' is actually a split with another one of Shining frontman Kvarforth's bands. Funeral Dirge is a two man partnership between him and the musician Missfall. For some added bonus, the Polish dark ambient artist Mrok adds a handful of atmospheric interludes to give 'The Sinister Alliance' the semblance of an actual full-length. While it goes past the call of duty in many respects as far as splits are concerned, 'The Sinister Alliance's musical selection rarely proves to be more than mediocre. Kvarforth has done much better than this.

The Shining side of the album is simply a reprise of their 1998 demo 'Submit To Selfdestruction', a fairly good two song release that the band did when they were in their teens. Funeral Dirge's two track offering on the other hand comes from their EP 'The Silence Ebony'. On Shining's side, the music is fairly straightforward depressive black metal. Kvarforth's screams are tortured, and the performance is muffled through a lo-fi black metal production that gives it a slightly surreal, albeit generic atmosphere. Funeral Dirge's music is not quite as good, a less atmospheric brand of black metal fueled by more clearly defined riffs and distorted vocals. The two bands have a similar vibe to them, but there are enough differences to set them clearly apart.

Although both Shining and Funeral Dirge bring enjoyable music to the table, there is nothing they offer that is exclusive to 'The Sinister Alliance'. Ironically, the best music on the album is from the dark ambient Mrok, scoring a trio of interludes that bookend the album and separate the two bands. These pieces are dreary and vast, and might be described as an arboreal symphony. Seeing as the Shining and Funeral Dirge tracks were recorded in 1998 and 2001, I am not sure why 2007 was thought to be the year to release something like this. This was at a time when Shining was in their progressive 'Halmstad' stage, and the early primitive black metal was left behind. In any case, 'The Sinister Alliance' is not a great album, but as splits go, it's gifted with a sense of flow and 'togetherness' that is not seen all that often.

UMUR The Sinister Alliance is a 3-way split album release by black metal acts Shining, Mrok and Funeral Dirge. The split was released in March 2007 by Old Temple. The Sinister Alliance is only released on CD in 666 hand numbered copies.

There are seven tracks on the split album. The two Shining tracks are taken from their Submit to Self-Destruction (1998) EP, while the two Funeral Dirge tracks are taken from their The Silence Ebony (1999) EP. Both releases are very rare and only pressed in a very limited amount of copies, and while 666 hand numbered copies doesn´t make The Sinister Alliance a much more readily available release, at least it´s a more recent release and a better chance of getting hold of these rare tracks. The two Shining tracks from the Submit to Self-Destruction EP are also featured on the Through Years of Oppression (2004) compilation though. The three Mrok tracks are a bit different than the black metal tracks by Shining and Funeral Dirge. They are placed as an intro, an outro and and an interlude track between the other tracks on the split. All three are ambient atmospheric and rather short tracks. The longest being the interlude track Interlude - Realms of Death. While I probably wouldn´t enjoy an album full of this kind of music, the tracks work very well within the context of The Sinister Alliance. They kind of bind the album together. The two Shining tracks are slow to mid-paced cold black metal tracks. Ultra depressive and with Niklas Kvarforth´s tortured howling vocals on top. The style on the two Funeral Dirge tracks are also quite depressive in sound, but the music isn´t quite as harsh as the Shining tracks. The vocals are on the other hand pretty extreme. They are wildly distorted and sounds very haunting.

The Sinister Alliance works very well for a split release between three acts, as it manages to sound like a complete work instead of a disjointed collection of songs as some split releases do. A 3 star rating is warranted.