Wrapped in beautiful artwork, Shadow Sun is the first demo of Dutch melodical metal band Mythlorian. They are from around Dordrecht and are said to have come together to create a new kind of metal; Scandinavian meets American. What I hear on the demo is more like power metal, high-pitched grunts, a lot of different riffs and ‘regular’ metal. Albeit not really my style of play, the four songs on this demo showcase their musical capabilities, songwriting skills and instrumental competence.

The first song ‘Shadow Sun’ starts off with a very power metal sounding riff, joined by high-pitched grunts of singer Ewout. Everything is very melodical, the solos sound like prog metal, and the drums are quite simple; not much hassle with double-kick drums and such. A good song that fits together nicely.
Then it’s ‘Oblivion’. Structurally it begins about the same as the previous song, but then all of a sudden there’s clean singing, not good.

Then luckily there is a very well put together prog part which almost sounds like the Dire Straits. From that point on, the song sets a more tragic tone, a nice transfer. Good solos as well, a bit less proggy, more power metal-like. Towards the end it’s high grunts again, and the clean singing returns, too bad. Still, a good, diverse melodical metal song.

Mentioned above are two of the four songs. They should give you an idea what this demo is like. Very melodical metal, diverse, livened up with solid solos. Although the production is not really ‘je dat’ (ask Mart Smeets for an explanation on that one), a bit flat and not really heavy, Mythlorian have released a solid demo with Shadow Sun, that should provide the band with good opportunities with some smaller labels or labels specialized in really melodical cases as presented here.