UMUR
"Min Tid Skal Komme" is the debut full-length studio album by Norwegian black metal act Fleurety. The band released a demo called "Black Snow" in 1993 and an EP in 1994 called "A Darker Shade Of Evil". It´s safe to say that my interest in the band wasn´t too ecstatic after listening to those two releases so therefore it was a great surprise when I put this album on for the first time.
The style of music is still black metal but lots of melodic elements are now a part of the sound. Beautiful acoustic guitar parts, female singing and a generally great dark atmosphere makes this album an excellent listening experience. One of the things I enjoy greatly on the album is the rather adventurous structure of the songs. The riffs are not very complex but there are quite a few of them in each song. Somehow Fleurety manages to maintain a great flow in the songs though and every song is cohesive and memorable despite the rather large amount of parts in each song. The songs vary in pace from slow to mid to fast and the change in pace helps keep the songs interesting. The use of keyboards on the album is generally very tasteful. This is not symphonic black metal. The keyboard parts that do occur are great for the atmosphere on the album. In addition to the atmospheric female vocal parts there are also some tortured black metal rasps (fortunately Fleurety have dropped the annoying high pitched squeals that mared the demo and on the EP). There are only five songs on the album but three of them are about 10 minute long tracks and the total playing time is 44:45 minutes. The album was re-issued in 2003 with the "A Darker Shade Of Evil" EP and the extra track "Absence".
The musicianship is good and the production is powerful and suits the music well.
I´ll lay it flat out here. I´m very impressed by the development that has taken place with this band over such a short period of time. Fleurety have gone from being a very amateurish and badly produced black metal act to being a very interesting semi-progressive ditto in one year and While I´ve debated with myself wether or not to give a 4 star rating or only a big 3.5 star rating I simply enjoy myself too much not to give a 4. Fans of semi-progressive atmospheric black metal should take a listen here. I was reminded of a band like Agalloch more than one time during the album´s playing time so fans of that band should probably consider checking out this album as well. A highly recommendable album.