It was not even a month ago that I was first introduced to the works of Diabolical Masquerade, Anders "Blakkheim" Nystrom's solo-project, and I am now just about to finish writing my fourth and final review, for the band's second release entitled "The Phantom Lodge". The trip has been both interesting and revealing: interesting because it provided me with further insight into the mind of Katatonia's creative axeman and revealing because through that trip I came to realise that what I consider an important attribute in every artist, the need for experimentation and further musical evolution, is not always the key to success.

"The Phantom Lodge" was released a year after the band's debut "The Phantom Lodge" and much as it's foundations are built on similarly simple guitar riffs and melodies, it has proven to be a different beast altogether. The nine featured compositions are substantially longer in duration, each displaying a large variety of different rhythmical patterns and melodic passages, which may indeed impress as individual ideas but do not always work to the overall benefit of each composition. As a consequence, I often felt slightly disorientated and confused by what I was listening to, finding it really hard to memorise and relate to any composition apart from the straight-forward Thrash opus "Hater" and the Celtic Frost/Obituary-sounding groovy monster "Upon The Salty Wall Of The Bloody Gargoyle" - the last song of the album.

Having said that, though, if you like your Black Metal to be both rhythmical and melodic and you are willing to invest in a band that may not be able to compete with legends, such as Emperor and Satyricon, but is more than happy to borrow elements from their music, then "The Phantom Lodge" may be the album for you after all. Yes, compositions such as "Astray Within The Coffinwood Mill" and "The Puzzling Constellation Of A Deathrune" may be too difficult to digest from time to time, yet their intelligent musicianship will often surprise you. The same applies to "Ravenclaw" - an Epic sounding eight minute composition which kicks off with an atmospheric tribal theme and whose main melodic line is a combination of Sentence ("Amok" era) and Bathory ("Blood On Ice") and also "Cloaked By The Moonshine Mist" - another rhythmical blaster with some interesting melodic guitar and bass themes in its many short but welcoming breaks.

"The Phantom Lodge" is the product of an artist in search of musical guidance - one who is willing to experiment with many different styles and sounds before reaching that point where he can claim to feel confident in his chosen direction. That is the reason why I will always feel ready to give it a spin on my CD player, but that is also the reason why I feel that, when I do decide to do so, the result will be more rewarding than that of any average release.

***

Review by John Stefanis