Published: March 10, 2014

Hypnotic Dirge Records has been incredibly busy on the release front for the last year, and has once again sent us a number of discs for review. One of them is In My Shiver from Italy, playing with black metal from the slightly more digestible and experimental disappoint.

"Delicate Poison" is the band's second album and contains only six songs, but nevertheless a running time of almost 50 minutes. As mentioned, In My Shiver like to experiment with their black metal, and it means that we as a listener is drawn through a little melancholy but still quite melodic landscape where there is room for both awfully, clean vocals, quiet passages, sampled rhythms, and a very rocking feeling.

There are elements that makes one think of bands like blah. Katatonia, Taake, Ulver and Epitimia. The mixture between the rocking and melodic black metal can easily operate, and also makes it certain places on "Delicate Poison", but it is still as if the great unforgettable highlights a long time coming. A song like 'False', which also has a touch of gothic / doom about it, is one of the album's better tracks. An excellent example of the band has a sense of being able to follow their mission with the music more or less to Door, and how the tools they use, seems to melt a little better together than many of the other songs.

'Liquid Hour', 'Into the Gray Line' and 'Drain' is also worthy of mention, and especially it is the pure vocal pieces that really shines through, and hits the biggest nail in.

As you can probably see, I'm not completely sold, and "Delicate Poison" suffer in my ears a bit to stand out as little as neutral as a whole, despite some fine legally competent ingredients around. In My Shiver are talented musicians, and in particular there are some interesting clean vocal experiments showing lots of talent. There just needs some extra spice to the slightly more significant kind to me completely on the bandwagon.