At last, after a series of mini releases and demos, Spiral Staircase channel their focus into creating a full length album. This debut sums up the band’s path until now quite well and with slightly clearer sound, but don’t be scared that it goes too far. Visions Shifting Form has an abundance of great riffs, slight punk-ish elements, a distant epicness with frequent ominous passages and plenty of melody for a raw black metal album. It flows nicely, and while listening, it is easy to notice that it’s a hardly repetitive record, as numerous different parts of changing tempos co-exist in the same tracks, yet the feeling of the whole outcome is kept the same. The band released the excellent EP Cellar Dream last year, and continues with an even more convincing statement in Visions Shifting Form, but I couldn’t help but notice the relatively short duration of most of the project’s material. Excluding the eight minute cover of cult band Asakku “Endless Woods”, the album would clock at 22 minutes but in all honesty, you’d rather have short but competent material than never ending mediocrity. Visions Shifting Form has a lot of great moments and really enjoyable tracks, and Spiral Staircase strike well this time with a release that deserves all the attention of folks wandering in the dungeons of underground black metal. Classic second wave guitar lines in “Returning”, “Empyrean Wolven Gate” and the self-titled track, the opening “Infinite Shadow” is clearly energized through some d-beat punk aggression, “The Hallucination” has even more atmospheric riffs that a different band would stretch to 10 minutes, and there’s an one minute shot “In the Scrying House” with just a couple of sections. The cover on Asakku is wonderful, it brings back the ghosts of the mid and late 90’s and makes it easy for you to label Spiral Staircase, not only musically but also chronologically. If you’re gonna look backwards, at least do it with decency. [3.5/5 - Great]
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