ENIGMARDEN

In 2005 Ivan Rozmainsky decided to expand the Roz Vitalis line-up heading for a fresh album.He recruited female wind-instrumentalist/composer Klara Metelkova and clarinet player Yuri Verba and, along with keyboardists Nadezhda Regentova and Vladimir Polyakov, he had now a more flexible core to work with.The same year Roz Vitalis released their 4th full-length CD-R ''Enigmarden''.

The album is another hard-to-get-into listening experience through the composing skills of Rozmainsky and his multiple influences.The base remains an organ-driven Classical Music with a monster symphonic sound and plenty of synthesizer moves to make it even more grandiose and almost frightening.This is blended with a fair amount of Ethnic sounds through the use of flutes and clarinets, thus creating a very dark and haunting sound close to Soundtrack Music.Imagine a mix of a more bombastic GOBLIN sound with the archaic stylings of OUGENWEIDE and you'll propably get the picture.The music suddenly shifts from pompous and nervous organ movements to soft and elegant flute and clarinet parts and the album at moments succesfully reaches the aesthetics of a normal orchestra.On the other hand though this whole project becomes too excessive, too cinematic and almost painful along the way, with little diversity to offer, while its running time is too long to easily get through it.

To rate ''Enigmarden'' is very hard.I get a feeling though that a live performance of this kind of music has a lot more chances to be appreciated than simply some spins of a CD-R at home.Recommended only to fans of Classical/Avant-Prog with strong Ethnic orientations.