Genre: Symphonic Atmospheric Black Metal
Release date: December 31st, 2022
Artist’s Page
I found this one person band by scouring the metal archives for bands whose themes included “My Little Pony”, and I am happily surprised I found something that’s actually not entirely a joke. If bands can focus on equally random things like a specific brand of alcohol (Rytmihäiriö) or Ned Flanders (Okilly Dokilly), then absolutely a band have themes based on MLP.1
This EP consists of four songs, all of which are instrumental save for some choral, wordless, singing in “Sol” and “Mare Cognitum”. The vocals, when they are present, add nicely to the ethereal, adventurous quality that I feel Idyllia is going for. When there are no vocals, blaring synths take the melodic lead, such as in “The Rain of Stars” where a trumpet-esque synth proudly takes over the melody, bringing the song to further heights. Along with that, string synths flow along in the background of every song, again adding to the atmosphere.
Each song feels like an adventure, a story being told, which is where my main gripe comes in. In my opinion, this type of music is perfect with lyrical singing; at some points throughout the songs it felt like there was a void where a singer should be, and when the wordless singer was singing, it feels like she should be singing lyrics, it fits so damn well. Overall, that issue of mine is small compared to the overall quality of songs. I genuinely look forward to what Idyllia has to offer in the future because this EP is an extremely strong starting point.
Score: 3.5/5.0
Footnotes
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The only MLP related iconography is the Idyllia’s profile picture on bandcamp, which is doesn’t automatically make the music MLP related. It’s almost as if user edited databases aren’t the most reliable. ↩