Norwegian Symphonic Black Metal band, Limbonic Art has returned with their seventh full-length album, Phantasmagoria. Containing haunting melodies and riffs that rival much today's Black Metal material, this is not an album to be sniffed at.

After a short prologue, the title track comes crashing in hard enough to satisfy even the most seasoned Black Metal fan. The listener is greeted with ferocious blast-beats, memorable lead-guitar melodies and Daemon's powerful vocals. When these elements are mixed with keyboards that settle neatly behind the guitars, it makes for some very atmospheric Symphonic Black Metal. 

Unlike many other Symphonic Black Metal bands, keyboards aren't the dominant force here; Phantasmagoria features guitar riffs that have bite, and plenty of them! The album has fast, tremolo-picked tracks such as 'Portal to the Unknown', providing an injection of hard-hitting Black Metal to the listener, but tracks such as 'Dark Winds' slow things down a bit. This album has a lot to offer a Black Metal fan; there are even goosebump-inducing sections of music, something that is unfortunately rather absent from a lot of the Black Metal that is released today.

The production is another pleasing aspect of Phantasmagoria. In this day and age, some Black Metal bands, sadly, go for the 'squeaky-clean' sound for their new releases; Limbonic Art is not one of these. The production on Phantasmagoria is clean, but not too polished, Limbonic Art certainly has not completely lost sight of the 'old school' feel.

However, Phantasmagoria is not a faultless album by any means; with 12 tracks, it does feel a little too long for an album of this type and there are a few songs that just do not grab the listener. Also, finishing with the two longest tracks doesn't exactly benefit the album.

Overall, Phantasmagoria is a respectable release, but not perfect. Limbonic Art has created an album that is worthy of a listen and will sit just fine in your Black Metal collection.

Score - 7.0 out of 10