Band:	Hidden
Album:	Spectral Magnitude
Style:	Progressive doom metal
Release date:	2002
A review by:	Sephiroth

01. Hidden (Unknown And Nameless)
02. Formation Of The Universe
03. Ice Crust Of Yek
04. Geochemical Arimates
05. Time as Eternity In The Cosmos
06. A Bounded Span Of Time
07. Macronucleus Chromosome
08. Spectral Magnitude
09. Supercluster

From Red Stream Productions we have here a new US band called Hidden. Hidden play a mixture of melodic death, power, doom, and thrash metal, and inspire their Spectral Magnitude to "cosmic" thematics such as the universe and the abyssal spaces. This inspiration drives them to compose a music which is intended to recall the frost and empty spaces of the universe, and in fact it is, even though it's probably their greatest limit. "Empty" indeed, is the sensation that remains to you after the listening of that album. Apart from the quality of the recording, which is possible to be bettered, I cannot underline one single thing that musically really doesn't works, but the overall impression is of disconnection.

The songwriting is not bad built, even if a bit too simple and linear, but the vocals, singed in harsh growling style are to be bettered, mainly because they seems too much disconnected from the music. The impression that I had is that Hidden are really influenced by the Norwegian Borknagar, musically and lyrically, (or the latest Kovenant) and that follow, with a bit of clumsiness, their steps. But if Borknagar have a great and complex songwriting and some wonderful lyrics, we cannot say the same of Hidden. Is just under the lyrical aspect that we find the worst part of this album: the lyrics, all cosmic-related, are often bad structured and too short and so repeated during the song, and others are sincerely boring and almost meaningless.

This means not that Hidden are a band to forget, because you can find some [rare] shining points inside two or three songs, but I think that a bit more of originality and freshness can improve the value of a group that, otherwise, is to be cast in the limbo of the nothing-new-to-say bands.