I've known this Spanish band only by name before receiving their third full length album titled as 'Age of Darkness'. I was very impressed by the cover artwork created by Michael Schindler of Dragon Design and therefore my expectations were high about the music, too.

Mistweaver have weaved quite an unique sounding style. The basis of the music is heavy metal, frequently poked towards more extreme paths by death, black, pagan and thrash metal influences. Other flourishes include tiny portions of prog and beautiful medieval ditty 'Melancholy'. Even if there are multitude of styles on 'Age of Darkness', the album holds together nicely. The most extreme thing here are the blast beat driven parts, and then there's loads of very melodic yet not sweet metal, plus calmer atmospheric parts and at the other corner of the musical spectrum lies acoustic stuff (also Spanish style). Keyboards are usually epic, but at least something a bit more unusual. Mediterranean feel can be easily noticed in Mistweaver's music. Moonspell's 1995 masterwork 'Wolfheart' is the closest thing I can compare this album to, even though there are still a lot of differences between the two.

Maybe it is the vocals, that make me think of 'Wolfheart' more and more on during every listen to this album. Mainman Raúl "Weaver" sounds a lot like Fernando Ribeiro of Portuguese gloomsters, maybe also because of his heavy accent. Majority of the vocals are growled, and while they're certainly raw, they lack of power. There's some okay clean vocals, too, again reminding me of Moonspell. Female vocals are used in a few songs, most effectively on 'Melancholy'. Witches, devils, ghosts and such creatures are lyrics' subject matters. All the songs tell a different tale. Musical movements follow the stories nicely.

On the other hand, the production is good enough. The vibe is kind of raw, very live, but live at rehearsal place style affair. This has caused a few troubles: On the heaviest and faster parts the sound gets muddy and drumming gets thinner, most notably the snare drum. All in all, the sound is positively old styled, without nowadays' plastic production values.

After a couple of spins, 'Age of Darkness' showed there's more into it, that my first impressions indicated. Although it is somewhat flawed, basically because of extensive song writing with fluctuating quality, the album came as a nice surprise. Anyway, I feel the band are capable of doing a killer album in the future, since this one feels a bit unfinished. It's still worth trying, of course, if Mediterranean metal is close to your heart.

Rating: 6½ (out of 10) ratings explained

Reviewed by Lane
07/12/2005 17:29