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WARNING: this music requires an open mind that doesn't run away from a challenge!

Don't feel up to it? Oh well, have fun with your MTV, see ya later.

Oh... a few of you are still here? Then, my friends, read on!

Speaking of challenges, this one's going to be a bit of a challenge to describe to you. Aesma Daeva is just.... different! But different in a GOOD way. Sorry to resort to such a well-worn cliche, but I've never heard anything else like it. While it should appeal to metal fans in general, it would be inaccurate to simply call this music "metal". Actually it's a mixture of very diverse elements: part metal, part electronic music, and part Dead Can Dance-type neo-classicism. Aesma Daeva's record label calls it "a mix of metal, darkwave, and classical music", which is also a good description. It is all of these things and perhaps more. The discerning ear might pick out other influences, such as a slight industrial flourish at times. I hear a progressive factor, and it's probably appropriate to throw in the term "gothic" too. There are also a few snippets of what I want to call Italian, Sicilian, or perhaps Greek, folk music (whatever it is, it sounds very old and traditional). This is a melting pot of different influences, but they are all brought together with enormous skill and precision, harnessed under the direction of creative genius. There are crunching metal-sounding guitar riffs, powerful and mesmerizing drum beats, hypnotic electronic effects of all kinds, piano, synthesizer, violin, bells, acoustic guitar, and beautiful operatic female vocals, all layered together in a wonderful tapestry of dark, atmospheric melody. The song structure is very unconventional, with both heavy and ethereal segments aplenty, smoothly shifting from one to the other and back, and often falling somewhere in between. It's not your usual verse-chorus structure; it's more like poetry being sung. In fact, some of the lyrics are taken from poetry, including a couple of Keats poems.

So who are these musical maestros, anyway? The project started with classically-trained guitarist John Prassas, who enlisted the help of programmer Nick Copernicus to create something out of the ordinary. With the addition of classically-trained vocalist Rebecca Cords, all the elements came together for an innovative new kind of music. Here Lies One... was their debut album, released in 2001. Rebecca's beautiful soprano voice is divine, and Prassas and Copernicus are nothing short of geniuses.

This album is not the kind of thing I pull out to listen to every day or even every week, but when I do I am reminded that it is a brilliant piece of work.

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