A couple of weeks ago I found a nice packet in my mailbox. A CD was folded into a document, which was sealed old-school-style. The document was sealed with red candle wax with the logo of the Australian band Quasar in it. It was a bit of a waste to break the seal, but hey… I had to review it, so… The package included the debut album of this three-piece, called Tales Of Arcana, a bio and a short hand-written note. With the first sentence of their bio they really caught my attention: “Progressive psycho-delic ambiental doom black metal... the story thus far”. 

A mixture of styles isn’t always a good thing, so I was very curious about what the mixture Quatar had to offer me. After an instrumental intro, with a name which is way too long, the band starts relatively peaceful with the slow song ‘Wisdom Of Afar’. The song has a really dreamy melody combined with some deep growls. In the middle they are speeding up a bit, but luckily enough that dreamy atmosphere is maintained. ‘Eternal Ancient Rhytms’ is almost the opposite of its predecessor, the song is very brutal and way faster. After this black metal track it’s time for the similar ‘Photosphere’. The band uses these kind of interaction throughout the whole album. Some songs are very different from each other, while others are not that different.

The music on Tales Of Arcana is varied, but the main genre is black metal. They integrate once in a while some ambient parts in it or some slow doomy passages and that makes it pleasant to listen to their music. Pure black metal is just too much for me, so this is perfect! If you like black metal with a bit more in it you should try this one.