Coming from South Africa, Wildernessking brings us their second record, “Mystical Future”, under the seal of Les Acteurs de L’ombre Productions (LADLO). The follow up work to the critically acclaimed “The Writings of Gods In The Sand”, comes to us with a rather unique approach to black metal (and some derivatives). This from a country with a still unknown scene in that genre, at least in Europe.
The record starts with a captivating riff, but soon loses its momentum. The length of the tracks is rarely a problem in this genre, but in the case of the first track of this album it became one, since the meaning of it got lost. It has a chaotic ambience, and has quite a few inspiration flashes, but in its whole falls short. With only five tracks, which makes almost 45minutes of music, you can single out “To Transcend”. Being the shortest track, with “only” 5 minutes, is the most homogeneous and beautifully composed. The rest of the songs somehow end up getting lost in the record as a whole.
The production is squeaky clean, not the standard in this genre. The artwork of the digipack edition is different and darker than the vinyl one, something that might please some collectors.
In brief, it is an album that falls short from the built expectations after the bands debut album. They have shown once again a tremendous potential, and some atention to details. They at least managed to get the atention from an European label like LADLO. However, an album worth to listen at least once or a couple of times, specially if you’re a fan of atmospheric black metal with an unique identity. It’s not bad at all, but Wildernessking have shown us that they had the potential to be way better.
