Vehemency On this little EP, originally released in 2007 already, Quest of Aidance blends together death metal, grindcore, and symphonic / orchestral / ambient... Wait, what? Well, the blending doesn’t happen within songs, but between them: ”Yautjan Overture” and ”Soundtrack To Hish” are responsible for Dark Are the Skies at Hand’s experimental pieces, taking almost half of the EP’s 15-minute total playing time.

What comes to the actual metal, we are offered four tracks of relentless grindcore / death metal fusion: fast tempos, both guttural and higher-end screeches and downtuned guitar brutality. I sense that programmed drums are utilized here, but it’s handled tolerably. A surprising amount of melody is to be found from these tracks, at least on ”Red Dust” and ”Sirian Breed” that rely a lot on lead melodies. ”Distant World Arrival” and "Yield” offer the most savage pieces on the record, my personal favourites.

15 minutes pass fast and, in all honesty, not much can be remembed of it afterwards. Dark Are the Skies at Hand suffers from being a herring salad: too many ideas are thrown together in so short songs. The fact that two of these tracks are taken from an earlier release doesn’t help the EP at all either, making the package even more confusing as there’s some inbalance between the productions of tracks. To me, it seems Dark Are the Skies at Hand is a rather pointless release, but I guess this could have its fans among the most open-minded grind / death lovers.