RIVENDELL

Middle-earth comes in many varieties: green and red, peaceful, dangerous, and downright hideous... Not that RIVENDELL are offering us a stroll through the last of these Tolkien-lands — not at all. Yet the image of the land of the fading mind, painted in black metal hues on "The Ancient Glory," turns out somewhat grey, empty, and lifeless. If you compare RIVENDELL with their peers SUMMONING, the latter always managed to conjure a truly cosmic atmosphere, turning each of their albums into a brief but genuine journey. Listening to "The Ancient Glory," however, feels as if Professor Tolkien's "Silmarillion" has been added as a separate subject to the school curriculum, and the dutiful students of RIVENDELL are grinding their teeth as they slog through their hated homework. After every free-thinking citizen got immersed in Jackson's trilogy, even such infernal track titles as "Theoden" and "Aragorn Son Of Arathorn" evoke nothing but listless sympathy. Then again, much like the magnificent Austrian duo, the album's booklet is squeezed down to a measly three pages — no lyrics, nothing. Just sparse information about the creators of this work, and even that is set in a completely illegible Gothic typeface. Final impression: no impression at all — zero, zilch... A pity, since the cover art promised at least a pleasant promenade...