Hguols - Epitome

The debut album by one man project called Hguols is the work of one Thomas Eversole and this is some real visionary music. I first must point out before going any further that this is for the most part Black Metal which is not normally reviewed on this blog. The reason behind me reviewing this is while this raw Black Metal, it is also instrumental and extremely Ambient. It is also unique in the way its recorded being it is a 100% MIDI recorded. I know this would scare most people off including myself but after checking some of this out, it actually surprised me to hear how good it sounds plus the amount of cold ambiance that is injected into the tracks. If there is a weakness in the using the MIDI technique, its in the drum-sounds which come off sounding a little cheap and thin but everything else is raw, viscous, dark and cold. All of the songs blend or should I say bleed together very well and the whole album comes off as sounding like a soundtrack to the apocalypse but once again we get back to the MIDI argument. This will divide opinions on the project, while I can already hear people complaining about making music this way, its also kind of a weak argument. I have heard bands using real instruments that still don't sound as good as this. On to the tracks themselves, all the songs blend together so not much point in me picking out individual tracks but there is a couple that drag and sound a bit sterile but that might the recording technique used. Most of the songs on here were written on guitar which is maybe why most of it works the way it does and the way the songs are constructed to make it sound solid musically. The weakness lies in the MIDI recording process and he might want to consider using live instrumentation in the future. These songs would kill with real guitars and drums but you have to judge music on what it is and for Hguols, it works fine as a project band and nothing more. I like the cold ambiance and the rawness but I have a major problem with how it was all made. Maybe I am too old-school to accept this as a acceptable way of producing music but I think you are only going to hear a lot more music made this way. Some genres of music should never be made like this but for Raw, Ambient Black Metal it can be very effective and Hguols has just proved it. 6/10

Hguols