Press - Reviews
31st August 2003
InsomniousNightLift review, Esoterica Online Metal Magazine
ThanatoSchizO
InsomniousNightLift
(Rage Of Achilles)
Having grappled with Thanatoschizo's début album for several months now, each time making a few sketchy notes which next time I read them seem inaccurate, then shelving the album for another couple of weeks before giving it another shot, I have to finally come to the non-conclusion that Insomnious Night Lift is an album so full of contradictions and inconsistencies that whatever experience I may have had with it is probably not worth broadcasting to the wider world. The suggestion that my reaction to Insomnious Night Lift might reflect someone else's in any detail seems slightly preposterous, though I don't mean to imply the existence of a great profundity of vision or density of arrangement on the part of Thanatoschizo here; rather, that their oscillating styles, time-jumping influences and alternation between the derivative and the extrapolated, the tender and the raucous and the clunkingly obvious and the outrageously pretentious ("My gratitude goes to my shadow, because nothing of this would be possible without her", reads one member's thanks list) mean that one's enjoyment of this goth-metal-meets-Anathema-meets-Opeth record would probably depend not only on one's opinion of the fused styles, but also, and more heavily, on one's tolerance for fishing thoughtful riffs from a murky river of default-setting moody acoustic guitar pieces and averagely despondent rock/metal. Myself, I've listened to this album more times than almost anything I've reviewed in the last few years, and each time any kind of worthwhile opinion seems to elude me. There is, though, an intangibly wistful aura about Insomnious Night Lift which is probably its most alluring quality, but for this reviewer at least it's a bit of a head-scratcher.
Harry
ThanatoSchizO
InsomniousNightLift
(Rage Of Achilles)
Having grappled with Thanatoschizo's début album for several months now, each time making a few sketchy notes which next time I read them seem inaccurate, then shelving the album for another couple of weeks before giving it another shot, I have to finally come to the non-conclusion that Insomnious Night Lift is an album so full of contradictions and inconsistencies that whatever experience I may have had with it is probably not worth broadcasting to the wider world. The suggestion that my reaction to Insomnious Night Lift might reflect someone else's in any detail seems slightly preposterous, though I don't mean to imply the existence of a great profundity of vision or density of arrangement on the part of Thanatoschizo here; rather, that their oscillating styles, time-jumping influences and alternation between the derivative and the extrapolated, the tender and the raucous and the clunkingly obvious and the outrageously pretentious ("My gratitude goes to my shadow, because nothing of this would be possible without her", reads one member's thanks list) mean that one's enjoyment of this goth-metal-meets-Anathema-meets-Opeth record would probably depend not only on one's opinion of the fused styles, but also, and more heavily, on one's tolerance for fishing thoughtful riffs from a murky river of default-setting moody acoustic guitar pieces and averagely despondent rock/metal. Myself, I've listened to this album more times than almost anything I've reviewed in the last few years, and each time any kind of worthwhile opinion seems to elude me. There is, though, an intangibly wistful aura about Insomnious Night Lift which is probably its most alluring quality, but for this reviewer at least it's a bit of a head-scratcher.Harry
