Illuminandi - dążący do światłości

Bombworks

Illuminandi from Poland mixes Catholic faith and metal, which is not a common combination. The Beginning… is a kind of overview of this seven peice bands history, as it contains the band’s first two demos as well as eight live tracks. The sound quality of the demos is average at best and the live sound isn’t much to cheer for either although everything seems to have been enhanced in a studio afterwards.

The newer demo simply named Demo II is no doubt the best part of the album. Classic melodic metal gets a nice variety with violin and cello arrangements, that you can hear almost all the way through. The vocals are mostly clean male vocals, but there is also some female vocals in a couple of tracks. The poor production hurts the guitar parts a lot, which are quite hard to hear in the background – and things aren’t well for the rhythm group either under all of the fuzz. The Demo I at the end of the album is even more muddy and high on the treble and you don’t really want to listen to it out of your free will. In the live part Illuminandi at least gets to show a glimpse of their potential, but even now the muddyness is eating up the power. Some of the songs however get air under their wings and they do have some first class hooks every now and then. They play through all the demo songs except one and also two “new” songs. Especially vocally the performance sounds much better than in the studio.

Despite some strong moments Illuminandi doesn’t really get fire into their bandplaying and the totally weak production doesn’t help at all. You seldom hear recordings of this quality from the even smallest demobands. It makes me wonder what the purpose of this recording really is, as a half quality release like this doesn’t really serve to benefit anyone. The Christian band has taken a lot of their lyrics straight from the Bible, which is quite a curageous move. They still need some small miracles in the studio however.

(Desibeli.net – Mika Roth, 24.10.2005)

Closer look for non-Finnish visitors thanks to Whitewashed – Viktor’s Christian Music Page