Scholomance – A Treatise on Love – Review

Scholomance

A Treatise on Love (The End)
by Martin Popoff

Scholomance is what it professes to be, a mesmerizing pastiche of progressive black metal, soaking up all the complicated habits of the centuries. But despite the manic song structures, medieval heart strings, and cloak and dagger Yngwie guitarwork, A Treatise On Love suffers from two strikes: muddy production and use of a drum machine, albeit intelligently programmed beyond all human possibility. Fix those two areas, and you have a top-tier black metal machine. Tennessee’s Epoch of Unlight, on the other hand, raise a frothy pint to man-made speed (although this guy’s drumming is so full and fast, one wonders), and their production is spot-on compressed urgency. Again, rum-flushed progressive black metal but with a hint of train-wrecked Witchery and The Haunted. Yeah, baby!
(331 Rio Grande #58 SLC, UT 84101)