When you prepare a meal, you shouldn’t mix too many spices, because the result would be something that either tastes only like the strongest spice on the mix, or it would just taste awful, and that’s precisely the problem with Light?; this one man project from Yaroslavl, Russia has so many things in mind but no order or rational coordination of his ideas, so the result is this ball of sounds and atmospheres that go no place and that tell no coherent tale.
The description or “label” for Mirrors is “Progressive Doom Metal with death influences” and yes it goes along those lines, it has the doom vocals, that are really one of the lowest points on the album, and the melancholic guitars which are the highest point in the entire album, displaying talent with sharp riffs and killer solos. Mirrors is sort of a rollercoaster ride of sounds and songs, and not the fun rollercoaster but a confusing, no end in sight, somebody puking next to you sort of rollercoaster; and by this I don’t mean the songs are bad, it just sounds like Mr. Churkin decided to grab a bunch of songs from different times of his life and from different ideas and put them all together without noticing that they don’t fit at all with one another, there for creating this melodic, sometimes angry death metal with some folk sounds and a couple of awful clean vocals.
Mirrors has its moments, those flashing moments when you are finally getting the song, shaking your head to it, when suddenly a tempo change interrupts the rhythm destroying that nice “vibe” that they had just created; some may argue that progressive music should do that, but not as hard, unanticipated as Light? does here.
It’s more than obvious to any that Mr. Churkin is very talented, the guitars are awesome, the piano segments are very nice, even the death growl is quite good, put the problem is the structure and order of everything, it just doesn’t make any sense, still if you are into unpredictable, progg metal then you should check this out.
