Tartarean Desire

Grade: 8/10

The musicianship and composition of this album is tight and the production is also very good. Compos Mentis plays a melodic, melancholic sort of black / death metal, as this genre title is the least inaccurate one at my disposal. You could file them under the BM section as you can with say, a band like Rotting Christ. The feel of this album leans towards sorrowful, as the album cover illustrates. There is a decent amount of keyboard usage, which I will appropriately describe as tasteful. The downside is that 97% of all this is topped with a monotone shouting which I personally dislike, though I'm sure most of you could get past it seeing all the musical ugliness out there people put up with. Number five starts with a piano riff that seems to be extracted from a Vintersorg song whether they are aware of this or not, though it could simply be a minor coincidence. The music is overall quite powerful, and there were several guitar parts that brushed lightly against my emotional chords, like good music should. Otherwise I'd just be sitting there like I'm receiving bad head. The lack of stimulation makes me angry, and this was by far the most stimulating record among the batch I last received.