Mental Home
Black Art
(c)(p)1998 The End Records
Review by Neil St.Laurent
Thanks to The End for the CD
Already known to many, Mental Home, a band formed in late 1993 in Moscow,
Russia, is out with another offering entitled "Black Art". Self-labelled
as dark doom metal, the music on this CD fills the spectrum from
standard metal to hinting at the dark atmosphere of modern doom.
Right from the beginning there is a strong use of the keyboard, both
to provide strong or subtle atmosphere and to be the primary drive of the
melody. It is an approach that is fairly common, but quite often
there exist trade-offs to and from the keyboards as the foreground
instrument, normally there would be a continuous presence of both the
keyboards and guitars. In this respect, certain parallels could be drawn
to Bishop Of Hexen, in that Mental Home at times creates the same
dark ballroom feel that Bishop Of Hexen does. And there certainly is
a constant feel of a more classical influence than a rock influence,
which lends a lot to the original sound of the album, and certainly
will help it to be very approachable by a wider audience...
...of course, Mental Home is still very much metal, and with that
comes the various guitar riffs and drum beats you'd expect. The
approach is fairly melodic, and shares much in common with the
ultra-melodic artists such as Sentenced. Indeed the overall
production and general qualities share a lot in common with that
Century Media sound -- and although it doesn't have the same
perfection in production, the production is, nonetheless, extremely good.
Through and through the music of the lesser known Mental Home (from
potentially as well unknown label The End Records) matches that
coming from any of the larger labels. The significant difference is
that the music on "Black Art" is much simpler than, say Dark
Tranquility or Moonspell, which makes it refreshing and very easy to
listen to. Covering a large range of influences, Mental Home
should appeal to anybody who listens to any of metal, death metal,
doom, or otherwise.
Mental Home is:
Sergey Dmitriev - Vocals, Guitars
Denis Samusev - Bass
Michael Smirnoff - Keyboard
Igor Dmitriev - Drums
Contact:
c/o Sergey Dmitriev
ul. Kastanaevskaya 55-51
121108 Moscow
Russia
Web: http://www.rusmetal.ru/mentalhome/
Email: maiden@glasnet.ru
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