Band:	Sylver Myst
Album:	Depth Of Illusions
Style:	Gothic metal, Symphonic metal
Release date:	June 2005
A review by:	Undercraft

01. As Heaven Blessed A Dying Rose
02. Escape From Reality
03. Depths Of Illusions
04. Seduction
05. Desire

Operatic works for you? Then read?

Here's another contender for the war of bands down in Holland, the Dutch scene is overflowing with Gothic Metal bands and everyone wants his Dutch Gothic Metal band.
Luckily for us, the Dutch scene brings fantastic material every now and then, you have the heavy-weights such as After Forever, Epica and Within Temptation, you got your mid-weights like Nemesea and Autumn and the light-weights like Auracle, Annatar and Sylver Myst, the subject to our review here.

The first thing you got to ask yourself before trying Sylver Myst is, "are Operatic female vocals working for me?" and it can be very comprehensible if you loathe and despise this kind of vocals, ever since a lady started singing in that style, cough*tarja*cough, a shitload of bands with Operatic female singers appeared, everywhere you looked around, an operatic female singer, this oversaturation makes things difficult for Sylver Myst, because they lost the originality factor here.

4 songs and one instrumental track in this mini-Cd, the songs are very atmospheric with well balanced keyboards and nice melodies. Opener "As heaven Blessed A Dying Rose" failed to impress me and as a matter of fact bored me a little, that didn't happen with "Escape From Reality" a great mid-paced dreamy song with catchy melodies and nice atmosphere.

Title song "Depths Of Illusions" speed things a notch and adds some male vocals as back up, but still fails to convince me, besides I found the keyboards totally out of place here. After "Seduction", the instrumental song, "Desire" sets in, and I must say this is the most interesting song in the Cd, the whole vibe is very epic and reminded me of the heavy-weights from the Dutch Gothic Metal scene, some rough vocals can be found here also, I want more of this!

If operatic works for you, grab this one, I you don't stand this kind of vocals (and it's completely understandable) skip this one at all costs, while the product is not bad at all, Sylver Myst still need to find their way in this over-saturated market.