The Last Surrealist - Void
Chris Romans, the sole member of The Last Surrealist, seems to be having an identity crisis. Based on what’s on this EP, he doesn’t know if he wants to play Black Metal, be the next Vangelis/Yanni or play Techno/House music. Void goes all over the place. It starts out as keyboard-heavy Black Metal, kind of in the vein of old Emperor/Dimmu Borgir, but then veers into this weird Vangelis/Yanni Ambient shit. After about five minutes of soothing soundscapes, we go back to the Black Metal stuff. A similar thing happens on the second track, though the keyboard interlude has more of a Techno/House feel because the drumming is faster. Void could have been a better EP had Chris trimmed out all of the Ambient/keyboard shit and just stayed with the Black Metal. The interludes in each song really didn’t go anywhere and all they did was stretch out a three minute song into a nine to thirteen minute track. I don’t have a problem with interludes or Ambient music on a Black Metal album. A lot of my favorites have them. The difference is that on those records, they belong. The Ambient/keyboard parts on Void are almost entirely unnecessary. Another gripe I had with the Ambient sections on this EP is that none of them were very dark. That’s why I’m comparing this to Yanni or Vangelis instead of something like Mortiis/Vond or Wongraven. Black Metal isn’t a genre of music that works well with that particular style of Ambient. If you’re going to do Ambient stuff, it needs to be darker sounding if it’s going to work. This isn’t dark or even weird. It’s just bland. Nothing on this EP is actually bad in terms of the individual parts. The sum of the parts, though, doesn’t create a whole that is greater. This could have been more refined. There’s potential here, but The Last Surrealist needs more focus before that potential is realized.
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