Review Vital Weekly

A mother Maria statue on the cover, 'Die My Illusion' the title and Dense Vision Shrine being the band, we have crash landed in the field of musick, magick and perhaps gothick? Dense Vision Shrine is the most important musical outlet of Karsten Hamre and he composed 'Die My Illusion' in a rather free way, he says: "when composing I just put the sounds together without deciding how long the final composition will be. It is done when I feel it's done'. The compositions can be short or long, just as is the case here. Hamre's music, here at least, the only work I heard of him, is about the dark and drone underworld made out of slowed down and highly processed classical music samples. Quite symphonic and despite its stillness, a forcefull and 'present' work, loaded with meaning. Frightening and dark, occassionally bursting out in a rhythm or two, here and there. But it's the mainly the dark, sustaining sounds that form the core of this work. For me it dwells just a bit too much on the classical music samples, with adds a certain patheticness to the music, and I'm just a bit too allergic for that. But otherwise a much alright release.

By Frans de Waard