Born around a mysterious and prolific American underground label known as Moonlight Cypress Archetypes, SKYTHALA is an even bigger enigma. Its members come from Knoxville and Nashville, Tennessee, but also from New Jersey, and their proposal is a strange and exciting combination of black metal, death metal, and Russian neoclassical music, especially that of Igor Stravinsky. Thus was born "Boreal Despair", a surprising debut album in which oboes, bassoons, and trombones assist the ultra-heavy guitars typical of extreme metal in rich and full-bodied arrangements at the service of dissonant melodies. SKYTHALA's scores are dizzyingly progressive and avant-garde, yet on no occasion does their overwhelming creativity repress their blinding metal fury. Quite unexpectedly, "Boreal Despair" delivers to the most experimental and courageous underground metal scene some new and fierce representatives, perfectly capable of rivaling bands like Gorguts, Krallice, Haunter, and Cosmic Putrefaction.
