It is rare that it takes a group twenty years to release their first debut full length from the time that their initial demo had been released but such is the case with Germany’s Mightiest.

Sinisterra opens with a nearly ten minute track “Devour the Sun” my first impression of this is that these guys play very much a riff driven form of traditional melodic black metal along the lines that remind me a little bit of Dawn or Dissection. At a total running time of forty-seven minutes this is definitely an album you need to make some time for, as the shortest song on this is nearly six minutes long.

The title track “Sinisterra” opens with clean vocals that sound like they could have came off of an Oxiplegatz record. They very much sound to me in the vein of Alf Svennson.  There are a lot of elements to Sinisterra that are really well done in terms of doing just straight forward guitar melodies with pretty basic black metal blasting patterns. I do very much like the keyboard elements on this.  The way the keyboard lines work with guitar melodies remind me very much of Gehenna’s Second Spell: Seen through the veils of Darkness album.  Nothing flashy or over the top but the keys and guitars work well together.

“Soular Eclipse” is the strongest track here and also the shortest.  Mightiest comes across sounding like a group that mixes elements of early Swedish melodic death metal groups with elements of traditional black metal.  If the song arrangements weren’t so drawn out it might make the contrast work a little bit better. That being said I like the way that this feels like an album that came out in the mid nineties but being that it has been twenty years since their demo came out I am left wondering where this group would be right now if they would have released this a year after their demo came out.  This album is worth a listen but I just wonder where these guys would be had they released this album twenty years ago.

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