Mithras "Behind the Shadows Lie Madness" (Candlelight)
By Taylor Green
Monday. Jun 04, 3:44 PM
Forward thinking, experimental death metal that breaks all expectations.

With multilayered madness such as Mithras’, it is unfathomable to think such a sound could come from a two-piece. But as most progressively minded metal bands do, Mithras break all expectations. Behind the Shadows Lie Madness is the outfit's third release and continues their stampede of forward thinking, experimental death metal.

The album begins with a haunting experimental track that recalls prison-era Burzum, but far more chilling and expansive. From there, the record burst open wide with "To Fall From the Heavens," a cacophony of changing time signatures, altering beats, and the massive shred of death metal guitars. It is the perfect opener: a mix of more traditional death metal with experimental song structure, indicative of what's to come but far more straightforward than tracks like "Into the Black Hours of Oblivion" and "Awaken Man and Stone." However, the band seem to lay most, if not all, of their cards on the table within the first few songs, and as the album progresses, a nearly stale feeling sinks in. Thankfully, there are bursts of ambient experimentalness sprinkled throughout, a trademark of Mithras’ on their past records. However, this time around the ambience is much shorter and serves more as an intermission rather than a full-blown musical offering.

While the ambience helps the pacing of the album, the track sequence is downright absurd. While Mithras may have put together eight or nine fabulous progressive death metal songs, very few of them actually cohesively fit on the same landscape. Rather than a full record, Behind the Shadows Lie Madness sounds more like an EP with very little bridges between the stylistic directions of the tracks. Therefore, transitions are often jarring and take away from the quality as a whole.

When all is said and done, however, Behind the Shadows Lie Madness serves as a perfectly acceptable dose of old school death metal with a modern edge, vastly different from the route the genre has taken as its bands age. For death metal purists, Mithras are surely a band to check out, and Behind the Shadows Lie Madness may likely be the best starting point.
www.mithras.org.uk
www.candlelightrecordsusa.com

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Taylor Green

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