Wilytank New releases by well established bands that I like are obviously going to make a few waves, but I rarely count on newer acts to impress me with their debut albums. The latest rare exception to this are Locus Neminis who saw the release of their debut full-length 'Weltenwanderung', and I definitely do like it.

What we have here is a mixture of influences from Darkspace, Lunar Aurora, and 'In the Shadow of a Thousand Suns' era Abigail Williams to create a spacey symphonic melodic black metal release. There's a lot of furious playing on the guitars and drums, and the keyboards are used to bring in that majestic atmospheric quality . The opener "Spiegelbild Der Vergangenheit" sets the stage for this journey with its intro a dark ambient section that sounds majestic and regal, but also quite evil sounding; I'm looking out and down at the cosmos at my feet about to fall forward into that abyss which happens when the guitars kick in. The guitarwork is tight on this album with a good amount of melody and even some acoustic guitar used well, particularly in the title track and "Wenn Die Nacht Den Tag Verdrängt".

I know that the band does employ a human drummer for live performances, but I'm not sure he played on this album because a lot of passages here sound a little too extreme to be played by a human without some programming help. The drumming production on 'Weltenwanderung' gives the drums an interesting technological tone suggesting the use of an electronic drum kit if not a straight up drum machine.

There are weak tracks here unfortunately, starting with "Ein Neuer Anfang" for being decidedly more watered down than the rest of the album and featuring parts that sound more like weak melodic death metal than black metal. The closer "Die Begegnung" is a bigger disappointment for promising 24 minutes of awesomeness, but it barely goes a third of the way before switching to time wasting ambient. Later, a rawer version of the song "Totes Licht", a song which appeared earlier on this album, is played; but it's not worth sitting around with your finger on fast forward to get to.

But 'Weltenwanderung' is still very respectable for a band's debut. Locus Neminis need to get their shit together a little better if they want to really excel, but really killer tracks like "Spiegelbild Der Vergangenheit" and "Virus" show how much potential these guys already have. I hope they can do something with it.