Published: March 20, 2014

Founded in 2007, Vin de Mia Trix are a four member death/doom metal band hailing from the Ukraine. To date the group have released one EP and one demo, in 2010 and 2012 respectively. Since their formation the band has seen a few line-up changes and currently only have one founding member remaining; guitarist Nightspirit. After numerous gigs and tons of self promotion the band have found themselves on the wings of Hypnotic Dirge Records and Solitude Productions, both labels issuing this release in different parts of the world. What doom infusions does the debut offering Once Hidden from Sight conjure?

Simply put, Once Hidden from Sight is an album of mounting frustration to the listener. An elegant burlesque show with an anticlimactic strip tease as the end result in an all too artsy undertaking. Now don't get me wrong, there's absolutely nothing wrong with poetic elegance and a fragile artistic frame that demands the audience to pay attention; Satan knows, the mushy lumps that homo sapiens deem as their brains these days need a work out. But among all of this romanticized French styled abstractness there's a noticeable ambiguousness to the material. The musical stylings presented are memorable of Ahab, though not as complex in their technicality nor as admirable and substantial. The album itself feels like a mirror of self reflection, and even a breath of hot air upon it's surface will cause it to shatter due to it's frailty.

The largest portion of the content is as follows. The lead guitar work is made up of long, drawn out one-strings that are clean and cold in tone, which gives the material it's Ahab sound. These melodies rise up into great, unsupported pillars of sound as the rhythm guitar seems like a sleeping Kraken laying on the ocean floor, rarely arising from its dreaming slumber to pluck one deep, rumbling ring-out power chord every now and then. The drums act as crashing waves as they contribute far too many cymbal crashes and hi-hat hits throughout the elongated content, using sparingly any bass kicks, snares or toms. The bass is the only element that supports itself without relying on anything else with loud, deep, twangy licks and lines. These elements are all conjoined in a tempo reserved for most funeral doom metal, but after a while the tracks tend to bleed together.

The frustration begins to set in during "Là où le rêve et le jour s’effleurèrent" and "La persistència de la memòria", both of which are glorified piano solos with ridiculous length. If the former track was removed entirely and replaced instead by the latter track, the content would prove to be in much better standing. The latter song comes in at a time when the material is beginning to heat up and break away from the solid monotony of a stagnant tempo but is oddly enough the better of the two piano instrumentals. It's also painfully obvious that these two songs are attempting to be haunting, sophisticated memorable melodies but their dire length and absence of livelihood makes them a trial rather than a pleasure.

However the record is not all gloom. The repetition is occasionally broken up by bouts of heavy riffing and slightly elevated tempos, such as in "Nowhere is Here", "Metamorphosis" and  "मातृ". The two vocal styles at work also play a big part in the atmosphere of the album, the deep characterized growls is the only truly supporting feature of the cold lead guitar and creates a sense of dread in the listener while the Gregorian monk type clean chants fill the audience with a sense of relief.

Although Vin de Mia Trix spent three years perfecting Once Hidden from Sight, it appears as though they may have put a little too much artistic obscurity into their meaning and not enough detail into the actual album compositions. What can be heard in this funeral doom inspiration has already been done in better quality by Ahab, just without the enormous piano solos. In the future the rhythm guitar will need to pick up a bit more work to support the lead and it would be decent to hear something other than mainly percussion from the drums.