Month: April 2012

The rise of The Foreshadowing continues unstoppable, and with Second World they release the album of definitive consecration. Already with the debut Days Of Nothing and the subsequent, splendid Oionos, the Roman band had laid the foundations to establish itself as one of the leading names on the local scene: anyone who had attended one of their concerts could easily verify the potential of a group to which the underground dimension was definitely a tight squeeze. This work, mixed and mastered by Dan Swanö at Unisound Studios, amazingly succeeds in merging the two souls that, in past records, sometimes struggled to take over each other: dark death doom and refined dark find their meeting point in a gothic that takes the best from both matrices without disowning them in any way. Marco Benevento renounces the harshness of the past altogether, settling on his warm and deep tones, close to vocalists like Dave Gahan and Sven Friedrich (Dreadful Shadows, those who remember them listen carefully to Noli Timere), while the rest of the band also performs at stellar levels thanks to a sound that is clean and energetic at the same time. Lyrically, the record is a concept centered on the rebellion of nature against humanity, a theme perhaps not unheard of but treated with due depth, while musically, if the first half contains the more energetic tracks, the second half is instead reserved for episodes with more rarefied atmospheres without losing an ounce of intensity, however. The ten tracks are as many gems set within this work, but despite this, some come across as even more brilliant: Outcast, a gothic doom track as we haven’t heard in a long time, or “when the students surpass the masters,” The Forsaken Son, with its dramatic procession and characterized by a chorus of rare beauty, Reverie Is A Tyrant, leaden in its slowed rhythms and closed by a magnificent guitar solo, and above all Aftermaths, literally unforgettable for its vocal melodies and lethal closing that bodes doom when it is offered live. Second World was released almost at the same time as Tragic Idol, which is outclassed, I say this reluctantly given the boundless love I have always had for Paradise Lost, thanks to the compositional freshness and the level of perfection achieved by the Roman band, though without forgetting that anyone tackling this genre cannot ignore what Gregor Mackintosh and co. composed in the past. Of course, precisely because of this, there will always be the usual uncontactable ones who will object to the originality of the proposal: faced with statements of this tenor, the only possible retort is borrowed from the Supreme Poet: “do not care about them but look and pass”. To those who, much more prosaically, are “content” to search for emotions in the music they listen to, The Foreshadowing have given an authentic masterpiece.

2012 – Cyclone Empire