Ukrainians Vin De Mia Trix belong to a doom scene of relatively recent birth but steadily growing, not only numerically. After dealing in recent weeks with the work of Mournful Gust, which is more oriented toward gothic sounds, Once Hidden From Sight takes us back to the origins of death doom from the very first notes with its guitar incipit that bears the unmistakable mark of a milestone like A Cry For Mankind. The fear of a faithful reproduction of the sound coined over twenty years ago by My Dying Bride is dispelled by a rather inspired songwriting, which sees the two very long opening tracks unraveling achingly as scripted but far from lacking in excellent cues, able to make up for the inevitable similarity to the inescapable Stainthorpe’s band (in A Study In Scarlet) and Swalllow The Sun (in the subsequent Nowhere Is Here) in abundance. The work has a rather high minute length that, perhaps, could have been reduced by streamlining the two instrumental tracks, interlocutory though well performed and not without interesting cues (particularly La Persistència De La Memòria), but the quality of the music offered by the Kiev band averts the boredom effect, especially if after the long pause for reflection offered by Là Où Le Rêve Et Le Jour S’Effleurèrent, The Sleep Of Reason proves to be an impeccable example of their approach to the subject matter, which Vin De Mia Trix approaches without using keyboards or other artifices to add melancholic tones to an essential sound, but effective in reproducing existential anxieties and hardships. Silent World, on the other hand, denotes a fair amount of stylistic variety, starting with a delicate acoustic base that is then able to develop in a far more energetic sense, along the lines of Opeth’s early work. More oriented to doom orthodoxy the two final episodes Metamorphosis and Matr, able to seal a long-distance debut of fine workmanship that makes the Ukrainian band an already established reality and not just a mere futuristic prospect.

2013 – Solitude Productions