(Grailight Productions)

Release Date: 2010
Origin: Ukraine

Mizantropia is a new (at least in discography) band from Ukraine and this is their debut album. They were formed in 2003, but they never released anything so far. They've been through many line-up changes and experimented on various music styles until they finally chose their own personal music path. They found shelter on a new Russian label “Grailight Productions”, specialized on symphonic black/death metal, with many interesting releases so far...

“Along the Lonesome Alleys” is a melodic extreme gothic metal album with female vocals and black metal elements. The sound of the guitars is very sharp, while the use of keyboards is very distinctive. Most of the time synths are accompanying the guitars, enriching their sound, while in a few parts they have a more symphonic role. The band combines typical black metal screams with female clean and sometimes operatic soprano vocals, something very common in this genre, but it works very good on this album. In my opinion Ekaterina has a really enchanting voice and her performance is the highlight of this album. She is great in both vocal styles, very expressive and emotional in her clean vocals and very precise in her soprano ones. She carries out most of the melodic lines, giving Mizantropia an excellent balance between emotion and power. Most of the songs are in the Ukrainian, but there are also a couple of English songs. I really liked this album a lot and there were some moments (like the song "Ghost in the Rain") where the band touched perfection, but there were also some indifferent parts. I believe they should compose a more balanced album and focus more on their melodic side, since they are much better there.

Overall Mizantropia made a very promising debut and based on some amazing moments of this album they can make much better things in the future! Anyway “Along the Lonesome Alleys” is a work that fans of the genre should check. They have a very clear sound under a professional production and you can check their music on their myspace site: http://www.myspace.com/mizantropia

dimiarch