Ufych Sormeer: a strange name for an equally strange band. Formed in 1997 by three friends Ufych Sormeer at first experimented a bit with styles, ranging from heavy metal via thrash metal to death/black metal. When they heard the second Bal Sagoth album “Starfire Burning Upon The Ice-Veiled Throne Of Ultima Thule” they decided to add keyboards to their music resulting in the final style: epic and symphonic black metal.

A debut album was released on Ancestral Craft Productions but due lack of promotion it didn’t do anything for them. So the label was ditched and Ufych Sormeer are now looking for a new deal through this four track promo cd.
According to the bio they changed their style a bit leaving no restrictions to be in their way.

“The Whimsical Have A Dream” opens with “Space Cowboys”; and the atmosphere is established immediately: it reminds me of Steve Vai’s “Sex And Religion” album (the one with Devin Townsend on vocals) mixed with whistles, horses and computer voices; strange stuff indeed. I think that “space” isn’t relating to the universe but to the space-cake they must have been eating before writing this track. Great weird metal for sure.

The second track “We Thought This Battle Lost” has the Bal Sagoth influences they were talking about, combined with Devin Townsend’s solo albums like “Terria” and “Accelerated Evolution”.

I really love the vocals on this one.

The following track has a very intriguing title “The Order Forces Strike Back”. Sadly enough there were no lyrics included with my copy so I can only guess what this track is about. It seems to be about some war being fought for ages and which takes an unexpected turn. It is presented in a sort radio play kind of way: as done on several occasions by Bal Sagoth. In my opinion this is the weakest track because it has less structure, it sounds like a sample of a longer track but still great.

The closing track “Beyond The Sea Of Cinders” is an instrumental one and the Bal Sagoth thing is very present also although I never heard them use Spanish guitars before. The dominant keyboards make this an epic song and with a running time of more than seven minutes there’s room enough to explore various themes.

”The Whimsical Have A Dream” absolutely convinced me. The influences of Bal Sagoth are apparent but never irritating, the cool experiments with especially the vocals are great, the tracks are well thought out (except for “The Order Forces Strike Back”) and the production is also very good. A singing with a daring and open minded label will not be far in the future I hope.