Band:	Arcane Dimension
Album:	In Ecstasy & Sorrow
Style:	Gothic metal
Release date:	2005

01. Intro
02. In Agony & Ecstasy
03. Somewhere Nowhere
04. The Art Of Dreaming
05. Dance In The Woods
06. Never
07. Within & Beyond
08. Questioning Lies
09. Echoes
10. Ashes To Dust
11. Whale's Cry

Fans of real Gothic Metal, I have something for you! Arcane Dimension comes from USA composed by the duo Theresa Camp (for the vocals) and Jarek Tatarek (for the music and instruments). Their influences come from classical Gothic bands and artists such as Laurie Ann Haus or The Gathering.

"In Ecstasy & Sorrow" is a nice and sweet release of Gothic Metal. The voice of Theresa Camp is really beautiful (a bit in the vain of the one of our dear Anneke Van Giersbergen) and fits perfectly with the Gothic Metal aspect of the music. Talking about music, I must congratulate Jarek for his excellent work. First he is a good musician but also a really good writer who knew how to write a charming and emotive music without forgetting punch and rhythm. Of course it's not Power Metal and in general the tempo is slow but there are a lot of punch in the music and it's not a soporific Gothic Metal. Also, the structures of the songs are complex and you'll be able to find a lot of piano violin or acoustic guitars (the song "Echoes" is the perfect proof of what I'm saying) that give (with the help of the voice of Teresa of course) a nice atmospheric spirit to the music. That's classy?

If all is so good, I'm sure that you would like to know what I only gave a 6.8 (which is not a bad rating by the way) to this album. Well, I'm sure that I'm not the first one who is blaming the band on this point but the production of "In Ecstasy & Sorrow" is simply terrible, one of the worst that I had to listen to lately (especially for the overdriven guitars). It's extremely sad really because their music is so good that it doesn't deserve such a bad recording. I know it's not easy and expensive to have a real professional recording session but God, something should be done here. Believe me, (I really believe it) with a perfect song this album should find a great success and I'm sure that the band should find a label easily. Right now it will be a bit harder unfortunately... that's too bad?

At the end "In Ecstasy & Sorrow" only suffers of a bad recording. The songs are good, same for the two musicians and for the nice digipack. I really hope that they will have the luck to record their next album with some better technical means, they deserve it and why not, it could be a good idea to re-record (or at least re-master) this album too in the future. But anyway if you like nice Atmospheric and Gothic Metal, go for it, it's a good album.