adg211288 Shards of Silver Fade (2015) is the second full-length album release by Australian black metal act Midnight Odyssey. Midnight Odyssey is the one-man band of Dis Pater. Pater has previously operated other such solo projects such as Tempestuous Fall and The Crevices Below, both of which are now defunct. He was also a member of Aeon Winds for a time. The last major Midnight Odyssey release was Funerals from the Astral Sphere (2011), but several splits have been released in the gap between the two albums, usually involving Pater's other projects, notably the three-way split of all the solo projects, Converge, Rivers of Hell (2013), which features material not on any of the full-lengths by each project.

One only needs to take a look at the tracklist of Shards of Silver Fade to know that Dis Pater has crafted an ambitious album for his second outing as Midnight Odyssey. While an eight track album might not raise any eyebrows in itself the shortest track here, A Ghost in Gleaming Stars, clocks in at 13:59 while the longest is From a Frozen Wasteland at 21:54. In total the double disc album spans a total of two hours, twenty-two minutes and thirty-eight seconds of music. The previous album (which I haven't heard yet) was also a long double disc effort but with a focus on shorter individual tracks (the longest of which isn't as long as the shortest on Shards of Silver Fade), so it's clear that Dis Pater has set out to switch things up a bit this time.

The style of music is atmospheric black metal meets ambient, that is to say that a good portion of Shards of Silver Fade isn't metal in the slightest. You'll need to get about six minutes into From a Frozen Wasteland before anything metal starts to creep into Midnight Odyssey's sound, but when it does it's a good showcase of what Pater is trying to achieve with the album. Atmospheric black metal and ambient music have a lot in common, so Pater's mix of lo-fi guitars and spacey keyboards merge together well. The vocals on the album also switch between growling and clean singing. The two styles don't necessarily correspond to the metal and non-metal parts of the album though. Plenty of the black metal parts use clean vocals as well, which in the context of atmospheric black metal works just as well as the growling.

This isn't the sort of metal one should listen to expecting to hear riffs to sink their teeth into. It's music to get immersed in, mood music if you will. I can't help but be of the opinion that it's something to listen to after dark rather in daylight, if you really want the album's atmosphere to be truly captured, as this definitely maintains quite the spacey feel to it (something only aided by looking at the artwork which coincidentally is also by Dis Pater).

The exceptionally long running time may be off-putting to some listeners, but with the amount of material you could easily treat Shards of Silver Fade as two albums rather than something to take in during a single sitting. Personally I'm not finding that I have any difficultly with it (and in fact have taken it in the single sitting while putting this review together). This kind of atmospheric music isn't everyone's cup of tea by its very nature, but if you're of the mindset to lose yourself in an album while you contemplate life and the universe (or whatever) this is a very easy one to do it with.

Time Signature Journey across the lush arrangements...

Genre: ambient black metal

Australian one-man black metal act Midnight Odyssey are back with another dark and atmospheric release which is so cold and depressive it is hard to believe that Australia is not a grim and frostbitten place.

Midnight Odyssey mainman Dis Pater is a man who does not feel the need to rush thorugh things and thus the listener is treated to a two-hour double disc full of dark and ambient black metal tracks. Combining lush atmospheric keyboard arrangements with lo-fi distorted guitars and repetitive drum patterns, Dis Pater has created music which is melancholic and darkly epic and easy to lose oneself in. Vocalswise, you can hear both tortured black metal screams and clean choral arrangements, both of which contribute - each in its own way - to the overall ambient feel of the album; the black metal screams, just like the distorted guitars are drowned in reverb, which is one of the oldest trick in the black metal book (but it works).

Black metal fans should not expect a ferocious black metal album though, as the atmospheric aspect is in focus, to the point that the ambient keyboard arrangements are dominant in relation to the black metal instrumentation - both in terms of quantity and sheer volume. While I do find that this release is a very interesting and entrancing one, it also requires a lot of patience. As mentioned Dis Pater does not rush things, and many of the tracks are around seven to ten minutes long and extremely slow in build-up, which means the two hours is a long time if you are not into this kind of music.

Fans of dark, atmospheric music, however, should definitely check out Funerals from the Astral Sphere, as they are bound to love its lush and dark soundscapes and expressivity.

(review originally posted at seaoftranquility.org)