A new one man project stepped into the scene. Ukrainian Darktrance came out of nowhere in 2007 and released the first full length Ghosts In The Shells; a black metal album produced by Dmitry Gubsky.

On his MySpace site Dmitry describes Darktrance as a dark metal project with the main focus on the ‘life of a rotting human race’. Sounds promising, because this is exactly the subject one can get very inspired by. Solely inspiration obviously is not enough, though.

The reoccurring issues with one man projects are that the music either evolves into something close to perfect or that the weaknesses of the artist become clear. I’m afraid the latter is the case with Ghosts In The Shells. The two aspects having the most influence on a so-called ‘mood killer’ are the vocals and the drums. To be precise, I must say the absence of drums, since it’s the drum computer that works on my nerves. The vocals are disturbing, every time Dmitry starts to spit in an aggressive manner, without taking the overall atmosphere of the album that he’s definitely trying to achieve into account. Basically, the vocals aren’t cohesive with the guitar melodies at all.

It probably would be an eye opener for Darktrance to involve other artists in the project. The potential is definitely there when listening to the dark guitar melodies, the slower parts and the keyboard pieces. Black Sun shows this point very well: when I listen to this song, I almost get caught into the right vibe, but when Dmitry starts screaming again, it’s ruined. Another vocalist, or maybe a second vocalist and a real life drummer would make a huge difference!