DAEMONIA NYMPHE

As with DEAD CAN DANCE before them, contemporaries FAUN from Germany, and Italy's CORDE OBLIQUE after them, DAEMONIA NYMPHE fuses ancient instruments and long suppressed primal moods with a more modern approach. While in this case we are dealing with the Greek tradition, it's worth noting that the styles of the far flung bands seem to converge when we turn the clock backwards, even if the instrumentation and languages vary according to the traditions. The closest comparison would be FAUN because of the uniform melancholia, conveying claustrophobic images of life in caves sheltering from the blood and soul sucking creatures that supposedly lurked in every darkened corner.

The instrumentation is entirely acoustic and skillfully plucked and blown, and the tunes tend to be repetitive and hypnotic, even mesmerizing at times, thus often seemingly dashing one's best intentions in the first place, unless they involved meditation. It's hard to pick out a highlight or two because your own experience might draw you hither and yon. I do enjoy most of what's here, especially the delicately bouncy "Summoning Divine Selene" and the decidedly more middle eastern sounding "Dance of the Satyrs". The narrative vocal style appears for the first time on "Nymphs of the Seagod Nereus" and "Hymn to Bacchus", which also includes some of the more harmonious vocals on the disk and a splendiferous outro.

This debut is probably the place to start with DAEMONIA NYMPHE, as it is their most consistently dense and uniform album that provides an inexpensive and high quality alternative to past life regression.