Points: 5

If you get the same kinds of pains in the ass like me at this kind of female and siren-styled singing, then you should skip this review.

Because, Wintermist, the debut album of the Belgian band KELTGAR offers more than enough of it and thus place themselves into the gothic metal corner of earlier Theater Of Tragedy and Tristania. Only their level is one KELTGAR never reaches, although they can set accents in the instrumental area. These pretty exciting guitar parts and the dreamy keyboard passages are really well done and know how to convince the listener with aggressive and slow-doomy melodies. But the problem with this band is the extremely high voice of the female singer, which even brings tears to my eyes ( usually I don’t have a problem with that ). First of all at My Kingdom the singing doesn’t want fit into this song at all. But songs like The Gates To My Fantasy and Nightly Liberation prove that it doesn’t need to run non-stop in this way either. There the female singing is moving within the middle pitches and shows way more to the band’s advantage. Besides there is nothing to nag furthermore on Wintermist in matter of heaviness, male growls, atmosphere and excitement.

A milestone in matter of gothic / doom metal with female singing KELTGAR definitely doesn’t deliver. And they really need to work on the points of criticism I mentioned above. But those who don’t care about it really will have fun with Wintermist.

Keltgar