Danish four-piece Ethereal Kingdoms offer a darker take on traditional symphonic metal. They have all the staples of the genre; beautiful vocals, classical flourishes and a sense of overblown theatricality, but there’s a nastiness to them you don’t normally find. Their debut album ‘Hollow Mirror’ clearly takes influences from the likes of Epica and Nightwish, but it comes with a more horror-inflected vibe and feels grimly oppressive.