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I was contacted by this band—a one-man band, actually—about some coverage and found that the most recent release is Chapitre III: The Middle Earth - Part One ("chapitre" is French for "chapter"), so I decided to start at the beginning with this first chapter from 2004.

One-man bands are common in black metal, but this right here is fucking impressive as one person's work. This is very deep and immersive atmospheric black metal that the listener can get lost into, such a beautiful mix of early Burzum-style black metal and symphonic black metal in the vein of Limbonic Art, among others, and a healthy dose of keyboard passages - not really my cup of tea most of the time, but here it sounds perfect in the context of the album. It's almost a perfect balance between raw-ish black metal and atmospheric, borderline symphonic black metal, flowing flawlessly from one style to the other and never taking the listener off guard, a must for the immersive experience that this album procures. This beats the crap out of some albums by multi-member bands, so hats off to Manylaethurius for his work on this one. It just gets better with each listen.