VIII had an interesting debut with "Drakon", an album that at one hand showed mixed influences, and also had a pretty unusual and exciting approach by sound.
Their music mainly included black and doom metal influences, but the more intense songs had black/death impression. Extended and monotonous slow downs have determining role, and they creating refreshing contrast with the mostly mid speed themes that are basically giving the major part of the album. The atmosphere have secondary role and comes in one pack with a strong echo effect. Its presence supporting the noisy drone influenced sound that's more common to find at drone/doom or sludge/doom bands. This combination works pretty well with black metal themes by giving unexpected depths to the whole thing. The impression of some sort of desperate rage is joining to the down-pulling melancholy, that increases the heaviness of the music. The unusual tone of the sound having strange and attracting effect the same time. This might count as a hint for the yet unexploited possibilities of black/doom metal. Small and occasional supporting features like organ-like keyboards, obscure sound effects, barely hearable suffocating-like narrative vocal style and an embedded funeral march detail are blurring the border between the themes and the atmosphere, but these having role only during the extended slow downs. Probably these getting too high focus on the album. Less of them, or the involvement of a catchy lead or a bit more diverse riff would still lead the required contrast, especially cause there are very catchy themes to hear on the album. Whether if "Drakon" was just an experimental album or the determined imagination of the band members, it's an underground gem (a dark one of course), that stands out from the long line of black metal related bands by its unique sound and ambition.

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