The Vision Bleak – Set Sail To Mystery

Here comes the third release from the Gothic Metal Band called The Vision Bleak! “Set Sail to Mystery”. The Vision Bleak is one of those few examples that has set a unique, personal sound from the first day of their existence. Gothic, horror, symphonic but above all metal! Forget all those gothic clichés. This is how this music should sound when it accompanies the word metal.

In this album, we can hear what made this band so special but this time with the bonus of their best compositions yet. Everything is balanced in absolute amounts. Heavy guitars, atmospheric and symphonic orchestrations, clean vocals, growls, everything. Excellent production, but who hasn’t nowadays, right? What makes the difference is the diversity they manage to achieve in the narrow margins of their genre. From the melodic narrative structure of the beginner “A Curse of the Grandest Kind”, the heaviness of Poe’s “descent Into the Maelstrom”, the majestic doom of “I Dined with the Swans”, the German expressionism of “A Romance with the Grave” (reminding the equivalent of another German band Disillusion), the Sisters of Mercy-like “The Outsider”, to the Sabbathic riffs of “Mother Nothingness”. I omit some songs and I already feel guilty. At points bands like Moonspell, Cradle of Filth, Devil Doll and Dirty Granny Tales came to my mind. Even Amorphis. But the beauty is that everything was like fragments of a well built puzzle which in the end depictured two figures in front of a full moon. 100% The Vision Bleak. Every song a separate masterpiece constructing an album which will be surely used in the future as a point of reference for the band itself if not for the whole genre.

If you are a fan of the band you are probably reading this with the cd spinning in your player. If you are a fan of aforementioned bands do yourself a favor and get this cd. The limited version has except from an alternate version of one of their songs, one Master’s Hammer cover and some excellent classical or piano instrumental versions of 5 of their songs. They sound as vinyl and they serve as a perfect horror soundtrack.