Doom

A 4-song, 76-minute excursion into esoteric funeral doom from this prolific one-man Czech band.

Lords of Metal:
In 2007 already two albums by Czech Republic’s Mistress of the Dead, a one-man act formed by Vlad Cristea Vales, were released through Epidemie Records. Both albums were reviewed by colleague Roel who apparently was quite impressed. For me this fourth full-length, Mistress of the Dead already has got quite a big back catalogue, is my first acquaintance.

You have got to give ‘White Roses, White Coffin’ numerous listening sessions because otherwise it’s quite easy to dismiss this album as mediocre, cliché based funeral doom. That’s exactly my first impression after listening to it for the first time. Of course it’s respectable that a sole person can accomplish a piece of work like this, the CD consists of four longs songs with a total playing time of 76 minutes, but you have to think of acts like Esoteric or Until Death Overtakes Me quite fast resulting in boredom. Still, Mistress of the Dead has got a character of its own that you discover after several listening sessions; in my case the penny finally dropped after a while. Vlad definitely has the ability to write some memorable melodies, despite the sorrowful and sometimes utterly depressive character of the songs. With an adequate production you have an above-average album within the funeral doom genre. I still feel that this act can’t be counted to the most original acts within the genre, but within the limitations of a genre like funeral it is a good album.