Review by Sonny for Alastis - Revenge (1998)

Alastis are not a name that has crossed my path before and they don't seem like a band who have made much of an impact on the metal world with no ratings here at Metal Academy for any of their albums and 120 the most for any of them on RYM. They formed in 1987 as Fourth Reich, but changed their name to Alastis in 1989, originally playing black metal and releasing five full-lengths before splitting in 2004. Revenge is the fourth of these albums and was released in 1998. The album is tagged as black, gothic and doom metal, but I hear very little doom metal here and the black metal is pretty much restricted to War D.'s rasping vocal delivery. Metal Archives has it tagged as extreme gothic metal and I would go along with that as a better descriptor.

Apart from the harsh vocals which are a change from most of the gothic metal I have heard previously, this is a fairly unremarkable album. It isn't terrible by any means and I have listened to it three times without any great hardship, but it just sounds like a fairly middle-of-the-road rehash of Paradise Lost style gothic metal with medium paced riffs and overlaid keyboards but without Nick Holmes' charismatic singing. The performances seem fine and all the songwriting elements are in the right place, but the whole is lacking any kind of spark and comes across as being purely functional. Once it has gone from my speakers it has also gone from my mind. I often see the "kids" describing stuff as "mid" on the RYM boards and I have never really got what they mean before - but now I think I do. Don't get me wrong, I'm not hating on this at all, but I can't think of any reason to go back to it when there are so many other things to listen to.