Syncronomica is one of those typical modern metal bands that try to encompass the entirety of – or at least a lot of different – extreme metal styles in their music. And, for a change, this band pulls off a quite respectable effort here. Starting with ‘Preludium II’ and ‘Beyond The Gate Of Life’ they present an entertaining impression of Bal-Sagoth’s story-telling-meets-melodic-black-metal-style. These are directly followed by the more light-weight gothic influenced piece ‘Fur Die Ewigkeit’, in which a violin is put to good use and relaxed baroque passages with disharmonic melodies grow into more epic guitar driven parts. Next, after a quiet instrumental, ‘Von Ende Und Anfang’ explodes with a straightforward attack of guitars with overtopping angelic voices, that slowly transforms into a more advanced and unconventional riff-based song that reminds me of IX Equilibrium period Emperor moments.

And so they keep on experimenting for the rest of the album with melodic black metal as a point of departure. Sad thing however is that after these initial songs the quality of the music gradually descends, rendering the fast-paced music wildly meandering through a variety of ideas more and more tiresome to keep your attention at. Considering the first songs however I’d call this album decent though not really earth-shattering; a fan of the mentioned styles might surely do himself a favour checking this out.