In my review of The Mist from the Mountains’ first album, Monumental – The Temple of Twilight, I cheekily compared it to a pleasing, albeit very plain, cup of hot chocolate. It was slick and enjoyable, without anything that really separated it from a dozen other epic melo-black albums. Truthfully, it left my brain the moment I submitted the review. So when the follow-up appeared in the promo sump, I initially didn’t even recognize that I had come across these Finns before. After some gentle “reminding” from the bosses, I found the sophomore album in my inbox. With the days getting shorter and the leaves turning a pleasing shade of red, I can always do with a cup of the good stuff, I suppose. As I began imbibing, I couldn’t help but wonder: have The Mist from the Mountains supplied anything more interesting this time round?
The Mist from the Mountains aim for the epic, melodic black metal we expect from Moonsorrow or Shylmagoghnar. Yes, this means songs that are a minimum of 8 minutes in length, with 3 extending beyond 10 minutes. But whereas Monumental clocked in a relatively manageable 37 minutes, Portal is a more ambitious beast, heading closer to the hour mark. It’s not just the length that has been expanded; every element of Monumental, from the cleans, to the female vocals, to the orchestral passages, has been dialled up. In hot chocolate terms, Portal is a bigger and stronger cup, no doubt. MOAR hot chocolate, if you will. But despite what the banner of our site reads, this isn’t always a good thing.
Portal – The Gathering of Storms by The Mist From The Mountains
Take a look at that cover. Try to ignore the overly portentous title with three different fonts. While each component is fine, I find the whole absolutely unconvincing. Not for a single moment do I believe there is a mountain with a weird door in it leading to a different landscape. The dimensions are wrong; the framing is a bit weird. And that sums up much of Portal. Individually, the elements within are solid (the black metal black metals, the symphony symphonizes, etc.), and superficially, it holds together. But on deeper inspection, it simply doesn’t persuade. Much of this has to do, I suspect, with a lack of identity. The band apes so many different styles (“The Seer of the Ages” is straight from Jumalten Aika, “In Longing Times” wouldn’t be out of place in Atoma, “And So Flew the Death Crow” is Emergence-adjacent), and whips between them so rapidly, that beyond wanting to be EPIC, I’m still not sure exactly what sound defines The Mist from the Mountains. As any fortune cookie wisdom will tell you, if you don’t know who you are, you won’t know where you’re going.
The rapid shifts in style also make it difficult to settle in and enjoy the grandeur of the album because you’re constantly being snapped in a new direction. Writing long-form songs is hard, and too often The Mist from the Mountains leap between styles haphazardly instead of making organic and logical shifts. This is especially frustrating because there are extended sections where Portal is really good. “Among the Black Waves” very effectively combines a lovely first half of operatic-type female vocals with a scorching second half of furious blast beats. It’s lovely and compelling at the same time. But its power is leeched by the preceding “At the Roots of Vile” which is all over the place, stylistically. This stop-start dynamic makes listening to the entirety of Portal a distinctly uneven experience.
Listening to Portal is frustrating. The Mist from the Mountains clearly took on board criticism that their first album was too shiny and bland, and decided to up the ante in almost every way. But, two albums in, they have yet to fully define their own sound. This lack of direction results in an album with great moments, but a limited confidence to sustain them. To return to the hot chocolate analogy: haphazardly throwing cool ingredients into a cup doesn’t necessarily improve the taste, nor does making it richer. The band needs to go back to the drawing board and decide what taste they’re going for and build from there. If they don’t, we will continue to get the empty calories on offer with Portal.
Rating: 2.5 cups of hot chocolate/5.0
DR: 8 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Primitive Reaction
Websites: primitivereaction.bandcamp.com/album/portal-the-gathering-of-storms
Releases Worldwide: October 11th, 2024
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