renkls Few albums are ambitious to the point of ridiculousness quite like Mistigo Varggoth Darkestra's final album, The Key to the Gates of Apocalypse.

A 72 minute song that speaks of sacrifice, time portals and new dimensions sounds outrageous, but in some parts of black metal, that's to be expected. Well, maybe not the 72 minute part. So how does this album pull it off?

Well, it's kind of deceptive to consider as one complete piece at points due to some noticeable fades between sections, and the movements between black metal thrash and dark ambiance sprinkled with some mild noise influence and sampling.

The parts that work best for me are actually the keyboards used on the album which kind of give it a mystical effect, and power to the heavier parts on which it is used. Sections like at the 58th minute work especially well with this aspect in hand.

Other parts are not as inspired, such as the concluding passage with lyrics, which is of a noticeably lower quality then the previous lyric sections. Intentional or not, I sort of wish it was better produced. Black metal has sounded a lot better then it does here, but for the most part (with the previous instance excluded), it is acceptable.

As an ambitious final statement to make in music, it does have its pitfalls - but at the same time, it's also got quite a few highlight moments, and seldom feels (too) overlong. For a 72 minute song, you've got to give credit where it's due.