Review of In Shadows and Dust - Enlightened By Darkness

I was pretty impressed with my first exposure to Stephane Thirion  and his third album,  A fleur de peau, from his one man project, In Shadows And Dust. It delivered black metal rendered with a Stockholm death metal guitar tone with good effect, and apparently the guys over at Redefining Darkness were also impressed, enough to get the guy signed and another album belted out in a year or so.

Though with a solid record deal with a solid label, little has changed. The HM2 buzzsaw us used to wield a more feral black metal style, though things have been fined tuned and there is a little more melody and death metal contrail contained within the torrid storm of HM2 riffs.

The release is brief, being barely 30 minutes, and the songs all hovering around the 3 minute mark , but this sort of salvo is meant for short sharp assaults, not lengthy drawn out affairs. after a short intro,the tile track delivers a surprisingly restrained and sober mood before “Revenge” explodes with far nastier intentions. “Looking into the Void” feature with a more expected Stockholm death metal canter before “Deathlike Silence” unleashes a Dismember on crack blackened death assault and “Dawn of  New Day” brings back the mood from the opener albeit a but faster.

The tracks never really stray too far from the path of the above 5 numbers, either thicker blacked stomping or blasting blackened furor; there little in between, but the face peeling satisfaction is consistent and Thirion  knows his way around both. However Id really like to hear him expand a little more on the full on grooving Swedish death metal as heard on parts of “At the Edge of the World” on future releases. I think he’d kill it.

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