Hesperus Dimension - hyperblastmetal webzine

Loki sent this my way because he thought it sounded a bit like Thorns and I could do it a bit more justice. After hearing this I�m inclined to agree with him, it does have a very heavy Thorns reference after all. Normally this would launch them into excellent standing right away with me, but, unfortunately, they didn�t quite pull it off the way I would�ve liked.

The album sort of started off in a positive fashion with �The Axis of a Diagram.� The guitar line was superb and I had high hopes. But for whatever reason they decided to put some bizarre saxophone parts over that guitar line in a couple sections. I mean, here we have living proof that Thorns and saxophone should never meet. They probably got the idea from Carpathian Forest, but the saxophone wasn�t really playing anything for Hesperus Dimension. It was just making squeaky noises most of the time, something you�d expect to hear from an obscure Jazz musician named Sun Ra. Maybe in a different medium this would be warranted, but certainly not here. Luckily the music takes a turn for the superior shortly after this begins and the saxophone play is very minimal throughout the album. I am merely illustrating the point that a bad beginning can really stand out to a listener.

I haven�t heard the prior Ep, but from a Black Metal perspective this is musically superb. That is when Hesperus Dimension is playing Black Metal. There are a lot of elements that can be traced back to bigger bands and I would say Thorns is the primary, but that inevitably leads to an influence from Manes. I think the Manes concept comes in because Manes was far more willing to experiment into the non-metal realms. While this is primarily all Black Metal on the guitar level, Manes was still more willing to experiment with odd effects. I should point out that this only applies up to �Vilosophe� the other material from Manes just sucks. Anyway, I also hear a dose from D�dheimsgard on the �666 International� spectrum. Referencing these particular things no doubt puts a very positive image in someone�s mind, but do not hold your expectations too high for this band.

Unfortunately this album closes on a very poor note and this is not at all good when they opened poorly in my eyes. The first part that annoys me is the song �Immortal Portal Mortal�. Frankly this track should�ve just been deleted. It�s some bizarre ambient effects with someone saying �Immortal portal mortal� over and over again. The ambient track was enough and they should�ve left it alone or at the very least said the line once and left it at that. But they decided to persist and repeat it constantly, ultimately the track just got annoying and I stopped listening to it for ambience and listened to it from a state of frustration when the voice spoke again. Maybe that was their intention? Finally this moves on to �The Diagram of an Axis�, which is probably some bizarre kind of �remix� of the opening track. This track would�ve been fairly decent if it wasn�t preceded by �Immortal Portal Mortal� because there is no actual metal song in between. The lack of a full song in between forces this Ep to close on a low note. If they had just written one more song I could�ve gotten into it a lot more and this album would�ve easily been launched into a rating of 8, because then �Immortal Portal Mortal� would�ve been downplayed in my mind. This, obviously, was not the case. �The Diagram of an Axis� is not a real song in itself either and the lack of two songs in a row followed by the silence of the album concluding killed this release for me.

This band, absolutely, has some serious potential. If they fuse the correct elements into their sound they really could make a serious fan out of me. However, they need to, at the very least, arrange the songs on their album in a more accessible fashion. I know a band is probably loathe to hear a nobody like me critique how they arrange an album so harshly, but I�m just throwing out my honest advice here. All that needed to happen was to tweak a few things and end on a high note. Even the saxophone piece is incredibly tolerable in light of the way this album closed. Unfortunately all I can say for now is that this is a band to be watched in the future. They may produce something incredibly profound in the future� for now we wait (as Vader says).

(Cleric)

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