Search - Artrosis :: In the Flower's Shade

Mesmerizing, heavy, angelic gothic metal

Steven Scharmer | Clearwater, FL United States | 08/10/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Artrosis was one of a kind. Their music was fresh. While they were slightly progressive, it was not "technical". Their arrangements and songwriting were unique.



They are regarded as "goth metal" due to the moody synths and the beautiful vocalizations of lady singer Medeah. She employs chanting of a sorts in many songs as well as regular singing. It should be noted she is more comfortable singing lyrics in her native tongue Polish. Each release of theirs had 2 versions, English and Polish. She's more confident and stronger with the Polish versions as far as words, but as I said chanting or "vocalizing" has no language and sounds beautiful either way. I still love her style on this English release In The Flower's Shade. Their are no male vocals.



This is their third of 5 CD's. It's my favorite, and also one of my all-time favorite albums of any genre. The songs are varied. Each song will often have several tempos and feels. The guitars are very heavy. The production is awesome. There are more uptempo beats than with most goth metal. But there are also plenty of softer, hypnotic sections. The synth player/songwriter is very talented. He also programs the drums, but that sounds more boring than it is. He's amazing in this respect. My musician friend heard this CD and near the end commented on the great drumming! I hated to tell him it was all programmed!



A bonus is the cool artwork. Lyrics are also included. Additionally, there are 2 bonus songs. Some editions of this CD list one of these. To make it more confusing, Amazon is not even listing the 2 instrumentals whose song titles are simply the opposing ends of parentheses, i.e. "(" and ")".



So, real listing is:

1)Unreal Story I 2)Unreal Story II 3)White Page 4)"(" 5)And I Will 6)Morpheus 7)Among Flowers and Shadows 8)The Following Chapter 9)")" 10)Two Ways 11)We, then unlisted bonus track called Djembe still on track 11 after 2 minutes of silence. "We" runs to approx 3:30, track keeps going as silence, then from 5:40 (approx) to 8:10 is Djembe. Then there's a 12th track called Delusion that sometimes is not listed, but is always on the CD. Got that! The bonus tracks are both outstanding, Djembe being the softest on the CD, but very beautiful. Delusion is actually the only track sung on this disc in Polish, so you can see what she "truly" sounds like singing unencumbered.



This is outstanding music that deserves to be heard. They were never promoted outside Poland. If you like this, track down their 2nd one "In Nomine Noctis"(Latin title, but lyrics are English). Their first "Hidden Dimension" is also good, but more raw, and different guitarist and bassist who weren't as good. Also, 4th CD is Fetish, also good, but gone were the uptempo feels. Much more somber, and Medeah's chanting was gone, as well as a lot of her charm. Another great Polish goth-metal band with outstanding lady vocals is Moonlight.

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