Diadem of Dead Stars : "Kingdoms Bathed In Golden Light"

This is project from Greece's 2nd full length and it  opening intro piece starts off sounding more like funeral doom, so their dark hearts are in the right place here. It's going to be hard to win me over on a twenty minute song, even though it will more than likely sound great . It is impressive that one dude is making all of this music as the drumming is pretty decent making me think this guys is more of a drummer than a guitarist.Truth be told I can appreciate what is being done here, but I can't think of many songs over 20 minutes that I feel the need to listen to more than once. It's over indulgent and who wants to waste the space on their iPod to store that?

At the twenty minute mark it finds him leaning back into funeral doom. It's a beautiful section, but I am not sure if the other 25 minutes are as compelling. I like the powerfully sonic swell the song builds into so much of the 30 minutes is well spent but it could have been just as effective as a more focused 12 minute song. At a running time of 7:21 "Into Trancelike Groves" was my last hop that I would get a real song. Instead I got a meander waste of of seven minutes. Synth pads, that are similar to when I fall asleep when I am at the keyboard. I'll round this down to a 7. This album's has it's moments , it sounds great, but the song writing is lacking since this is just two songs that are both over twenty minutes. Hold on you say, it takes skill to write a 30 minute song, after all pop stars can't do it. It takes skill to write a 30 minute that is engaging for all 30 minutes which is not the case here. You can argue that this is what classical composures did all the time, but there music stand the test of time I'll forget this came out by next summer.