At the first sight CHIMERA attend all clichés and preconceptions one might get in mind reading the facts: one-man-black-metal-project from Italy, founded yesterday with the demand to create exceptional music. Honni soit qui mal y pense.
Fortunately the second sight reveals better conditions: founded back in 2002 CHIMERA is the brainchild of Vishtasb and his demo Nothing But Illusions the first musical sign of life. That Vishtasb is a Persian name is actually the only thing I could find out about the man behind.
Nothing But Illusions offers three opulent tracks, running more than 7 minutes each and a fading instrumental. A Curse To Dawn firstly follows classic black metal paths: frostily sawing guitars and typical raspy singing. Later strings samples various sounds set accents while Vishtasb uses his clean voice, sounding like the liberation of long-tormented souls, adding a schizophrenic touch to the song. Executed emotional bursts in singing sometimes remind me of Elend and also Void Of Silence and Aborym. Fogs goes similar ways, just getting in samples right from the beginning, losing the thread in strange breaks. Carmine attends with massive keyboards weaving dense soundscapes in the background, but the sound is so bad that they cannot attract any negative attention. For that matter: the drum computer is really terrible too! Typical problem with this sort of projects: one man cannot master all instruments himself and good drummers are not easy to find. But this drum machine sucks. It’s the same with the production. This money Mr. Vishtasb could better have wasted for anything else than this studio. The sound is bad, especially since this is not old school black metal where bad sound is true. But outro The Last Illusion Dies placates me a little again.
Upshot: musically speaking an interesting demo with good approaches and impressing dark atmosphere but with a bad drum machine and sound. Something good… for a turn-off too.