One man bands, I get a lot of those lately, and as I've told you before, they tend to have a very little middle ground, other they're excellent and serve as a vehicle for a man's vision, or they're terrible because the visionary has no one to bounce his or her ideas off of, so what category does GARTH ARUM fall into?

The Spanish one man project's debut full length opens with a piano heavy symphonic intro, "A New Creation", comes complete with female vocals, but it is the skillful piano work that immediately catches your ear, the piano continues well into the next track "Shadows of the Past", the song however picks up pace into a full blown Death Metal blast, slows down again and again forays into the realms of Death Metal with Symphonic Black undertones. It is very obvious from the get go that this album is a far cry from your standard one man band. Let's start from the fact that while most Metal albums use the guitar as the main attraction, while GARTH ARUM use both the guitar and the piano, notice I didn't say Keyboards, I said piano, as it is a classical piano sound on the album which is so dominant, rather than the standard synthesizer / keyboards that most Black / Gothic / Doom Metal acts use.

That very fact sets it apart from your run of the mill extreme metal act, Have a listen to "The Path of Oblivion", a fantastic composition, utilizing very interesting guitar effects, lead female vocals with the piano being dominant on the heavy chorus rather than the slower and more mellow verses making the sound very unusual and original, with electronic effects coming in towards the 3 minute mark, This my friends is the album of a musician, an excellently executed piece of metal mastery, Impressive in its songwriting, the pace changes quickly, the longer compositions never overstay their welcome,

And most importantly, it's original and unusual enough to make anyone have a listen, foraying into several genres, including Symphonic, Black, Death and Doom; It's a fascinating piece of work and truly deserves a perfect score!