This band was formed in 1988 by Mario "The Black" Di Donato, former leader of Requiem and Unreal Terror. This album itself was originally released in 1994, and was comprised of two songs recorded in 1989, five from 1990, three from 1992 and just one from 1994 itself. Back then it was only available on vinyl, but it has now been reissued by Black Widow on CD for the first time, with three additional songs which come from 2000, 2001 and 2010. The band’s most recent album before this was 2010 and they seem to have been recording on and off since their inception. Interestingly, when looking at Rate Your Music this is given the lowest grading of any of their albums, and I can’t say that it is much of a surprise.
Musically and vocally these guys are all over the place. They call themselves a doom band, and that is as good a tag as any, with gothic and progressive overtones, but it comes across as a real mess. The keyboards often don’t go well with the guitars, and sometimes all of the musicians sound as if they were in different studios playing different songs, with vocals just thrown in from a first take. If this were a Black Metal band I would comment on their need to sound ‘authentic’, and that they deliberately wanted to sound as if they had been recorded onto poor quality cassette. But this is more than that. They have tried to bring in elements of horror a la Goblin, but it fails on just about every level. The frustrating element is that there are passages where they give a glimpse of what might have been, but overall it is not something to which I will often be returning.
www.blackwidow.it
