CD REVIEW The Vision Bleak

Band: The Vision Bleak
Title: Set Sail To Misery
Label: Prophecy Productions
Distribution: Suburban
Release date: 05/04/2010
Review: CD

The Vision Bleak is a magisterial co-operation between Ulf Theodor Schwadorf (aka F.F. Yugoth aka Markus Stock), known from many bands and projects, among which Autumnblaze, Nachtmahr, Noekk and Sun Of The Sleepless (he’s also the guy behind the Klangschmiede Studio, where he did work, as producer / engineer with bands as Midnattsol, Eluveitie, Ahab, Bethlehem, Secrets Of The Moon and many, many others), and Allen B. Konstanz (aka Tobias Schönemann), involved with, for example, Ewigheim, Nox Mortis and Asgaia (did also work as producer with, for example, Eluveitie, Eisregen, Transilvanian Beat Club or Coronatus).

The duo did record three highly acclaimed albums before: The Deathship Has A New Captain (2003/2004), Carpathia (A Dramatic Poem) (2005), and The Wolves Go Hunt Their Prey (2007), all of them released through Prophecy. And the strength behind those albums is double: 1) they do differ a lot from each other, and 2) they are clearly composed and performed by the same persons. Different, yet with a very comparable approach, it’s a surplus not many bands or projects are able to maintain.
And as a matter of fact, the same goes for this fourth album. Again it differs a lot from any former album, yet at the same time it clearly is a The Vision Bleak release.
Set Sail To Misery, lasting for forty five minutes, opens with a bombastic-symphonic intro, A Curse Of The Grandest Kind, which sets the tone for the addictively darkening journey through obscure worlds and endless seas of sorrow and oppression (by the way, the lyrics are taken from Lord Byron!). As from Descend Into Maelstrom, the second track, there’s no return. You will undergo a horrific and desperate descent into grimness and eternal obeisance. The whole balances between different (dark / darkened / darkening) musical scenes: symphonic Black Metal, funereal Doom and eerie Gothic Metal, and so on; but The Vision Bleak is a proper entity, going for both the musical approach as well as the atmosphere. It is dramatic, it is overwhelming, it is powerful, it is suffocating, it is hypnotic, this is glooming beauty in its most breath-taking definition.

And yes, at the same time Set Sail To Misery is The Vision Bleak bleakest and strongest effort to date!

90/100

Ivan Tibos.