Debuting from Galicia, Spain, Dantalion offers up a melodic and emotional vision of black metal on “When the Ravens Fly Over Me.” Atmospheric and depressive, aggressive and hateful, Dantalion has crafted quite an impressive debut album. Mid to fast paced beats, high pitched guitars with some nice acoustic segments layered throughout and some truly inspired vocals give backbone to “When the Ravens Fly Over Me.” Slightly under produced and an almost complete lack of a bass guitar give this album that trademark black metal feel. Don’t get me wrong, the bass is there, but the album itself is very treblely, for lack of a better word… or a word at all, which that might not be.

Anyway, half of the time, the songs can blast away at a fevered rate and can switch to a plodding, methodic stint of emotional atmosphere. Most of the songs are long, over seven minutes, so there is plenty of time for the songs to take many different avenues making the album a journey; one that ends too soon. Not that the album is short at forty seven minutes, but nothing about this album drags on or becomes boring in any way and before you know it, it’s over. The instrumental track, “Abyss of Solitude” is just beautiful and further makes my point.

The cover fits the mood of the album perfectly. It’s a scene of dead trees with some birds flying past. Desolate.

As a debut, I couldn’t be more impressed with “When the Ravens Fly Over Me” and I see Dantalion taking their sound to new levels of desolate desperation and despair on future albums. I for one am now adding Dantalion to my list of bands to seriously watch for in the coming years.