ENIGMARDEN

What's good in ROZ VITALIS is that they keep changing their musical style with each album. Sometimes just a little and sometimes the change is for worse. This album is quite a mix and is more diverse than any of their previous works. Gone are the high spirits of their previous album, the mood here is shamanic, often meditative and mysterious. Instrumentation-wise the bells and harpsichord are replaced by clarinets, recorders and flutes. Not that the sound is much richer in comparison to their previous albums, but it's getting there.

What's unfortunate is that they've returned to composing more or less boring pieces like 'Heartcrying' or 'Humilitas', and by boring I mean dominated by one mood/instrument (woodwinds instead of soundscaping of their previous work) or slow-paced with few events. However lots of compositions have interesting clarinet/keyboards interplays or have typical drive of their fast- paced horror keyboards+programmed drums output.

The highlights include 'Lovechoes' - a really diverse composition with lots of changes and lovely sad keyboards passages, unfortunately the composition is spoiled with some synth keyboard irritating noise in the louder parts. 'Precautionary motive' has wonderful clarinet/keyboards interplay with memorable melodies, but again spoiled with the same noise a little. The title track also gives an extreme sense of everlasting change. What a pity these three highlights alternate with too monotonous compositions between them. The first 5 tracks were quite good to set my expectations high, but then the album flow broke.