From the always rich and peculiar casket of Naturmacht comes this second full length of Skyborne Reveries, an Australian one man band active since a few years by the will of Australian musician Nathan Churches. The sound offered here is a very atmospheric post black metal, well structured and developed with a strong melodic sense. The good taste and the delicate progression of the tracks make a work like Winter Lights absolutely pleasant, allowing you to spend an hour in the company of music of great emotional intensity and very smooth. It must also be said that, despite some rhythmic acceleration and the usual scream, the metallic pulsions remain definitely in the background, also relegated by a production that privileges too much the keyboards, predominant instrument in the whole album. So, a series of songs with a dreamy and caressing trend unwinds without particular variations on the theme, going to compose a work that is certainly beautiful but that, precisely because of the small defects mentioned above, does not allow Skyborne Reveries to reach or approach the absolute excellence. What remains in the ears is something pleasantly caressing that I can define, broadly speaking, a much more sweetened version of Coldworld and, also for this reason, Winter Lights is destined to find admirers in those who also prefer the more airy ambient music. Among the tracks, I’d say that the best synthesis is reached by Nathan in The Forgotten, both in terms of length and structure, where the black takes a more predominant part in the sound, marrying the best to an always present atmospheric vein. Here is therefore an ideal base from which to start again to try to make a decisive leap in quality, in addition to a fundamental progress desirable at the production level to enhance the characteristics of a sound that, being far from the roughness of the more canonical black, needs a clearer performance.

2018 – Naturmacht Productions