This is Slovakian black metal band Aeon Winds third (I think) full length in a little over a decade but, as is my wont skulking down in the depths of lo-fi cassette world of late, my first acquaintance. But it looked promising so I took it from the review lists. Rather glad I did to be honest.

It’s a synth driven, ambient opening to the title track, that quiet but epic sound that Midnight Odyssey are the masters of, before a darker, deeper riff and drum beat strikes up. There is a conjuring almost immediately; a presence of sweeping darkness and clouds. The vocals are borne on these turbulent winds with a sound that drips both with early nineties majesty and modern production. Names like Emperor, Necromantia, early Gehenna and Limbonic Art. Random names maybe but somehow they were all summoned with this strident, strong opener. Keyboard heavy, prominently drum driven and with a huge sense of surging power and imperious presence. ‘Opus Coronation’ is a stately affair. Ponderous steps down some shadow haunted nave towards who knows what. That feel of being unafraid of the idea of dark but grandiose majesty that seemed to get lost to black metal after the mid-nineties is here in great velvet swathes but between the vocals and the riff and the drums the teeth and the claws are never far away. As it picks up speed just a little I can’t help but be reminded of Emperor of old with a weird touch of Diabolical Masquerade but regardless Aeon Winds very much weave this into their own sound.

I don’t want to do a track by track. I want to offer the idea that this is very much an experience as a whole as well as outstanding individual songs. The symphonic rides so high in ‘Of Revenants And Apparitions’ for example, a surge of pure theatrical power but with claws within to remind you of the danger of forgetting that this is simply the illusions of grand-guignol but something pulled from a darker corner. Aeon Winds can pass through celestial regions into absolute and infernal conflagrations. They seem to do it with commanding motions from some symbol encrusted baton; symphony here, introspective and from the spheres there, gliding parallel to progressive now and then and choral sounds elsewhere but always kinetic, always this unstoppable Arcturian sense of movement and current. It is as though these great clouds of music and command billow out from the darkness and envelop you.

This is most definitely not an album for those who eschew the grandiose spectacle or the symphonic oceans. This is dark, often brooding music that is a spectacle designed to behold and to stand in awe of. It glistens darkly and shifts and turns and blocks out the world with waves of timeless scenes and promises of other voids to explore. Imperial, demanding and majestic.

Damn, I think I needed this album this year.

(9/10 Gizmo)

https://www.facebook.com/AeonWinds

https://avantgardemusic.bandcamp.com/album/night-sky-illuminations