Midnight Odyssey – Firmament (2010)

Hailing from Australia today we review Midnight Odyssey’s debut full-length album “Firmament” which in fact is a reissue of their 2009 demo of the same name but with different cover art. This band plays Atmospheric Black Metal and does a fine job at creating a very eerie release, but falls short in terms of originality and diversity.

Dis Pater is the mastermind (and only member) behind Midnight Odyssey. The album features over an hour of haunting hymns dedicated to despair and darkness. Like we mentioned this release is neither original nor diverse, but it has interesting individual features, like the use of some beats in the programmed drum track and some nice ambient melodies.

Far from this isolated interesting elements we get a very formulaic album that will make you think if the same track is on repeat more than a couple of times. But the best for some people, but worst for us is the annoying and highly repetitive use of accelerated drums with a very simple and piercing guitar riff that accompanies the shrieks of pain. This is used through the album and sounds exactly the same every single time it’s used. When the riff is truly haunting and good, this is not a problem in this type of releases, but when it’s just downright annoying it makes things really bad after 35-40 minutes of listening to it.

But not all is bad; the atmosphere created is top notch, very minimalistic in a way and downright haunting. The vocals are very deranged and we like them, but there are many parts that should be silent and not have them in our opinion. Dis Pater shows some ability in writing good songs, but the whole formulaic approach he takes makes these songs rather dull. We think that with more experimentation and outside of the box thinking all these songs have more potential than shown.

Overall, “Firmament” is a solid Atmospheric Black Metal release, but lacks in the creativity department. If you don’t mind being numbed in to sleep then this release will surely satisfy your needs. There are brilliant moments and nice songs like “Slavation Denied”, but the vast majority of the ‘Black Metal’ sections in this release are downright bad.

Release: February 2010

Country: Australia