Tempestuous Fall is the new incarnation of Australian musician Dis Pater, known so far in the environment for his main project Midnight Odyssey. If the works published under this moniker have always been under the banner of a fascinating black ambient, The Stars Would Not Awake You explores the dark meanderings of funeral death doom territories, giving free rein to those primal influences that, according to the author himself, for some unfathomable reason until now had not found their natural outlet. The result is also really appreciable because, despite the declared reference to the works of My Dying Bride and Anathema of the 1990s, the album develops on coordinates that are anything but predictable over the course of its abundant hour of duration spread over five long tracks, finding its qualitative peaks in the opener Old & Grey and the closing track A Cold Stale Goodbye. In the former, the great melodic taste and evocative clean vocals are striking, while in the latter the atmospheres become more leaden and clearly funeral-like, with a sound that leads directly back to the legendary Thergothon. In this sense, the title track also proves to be a track of great quality, especially when a solemn ensemble of guitar, keyboards and growl bursts in literally brutalizing the delicate piano passages, while both Beneath A Stone Grave and Marble Tears help to keep the average level of the entire work high. Taking into account the fact that Dis Pater is trying his hand at this genre for the first time and that the album was released at the same time as such an immense work as Evoken’s Atra Mors, it is safe to say that The Stars Would Not Awake You does not come out at all crushed by the comparison, fitting, instead, in the wake of the U.S. masters thanks to inspired and anything but mannered songwriting.
It only remains to be hoped that Tempestuous Fall will not remain a side project for the Australian musician but, on the contrary, will be further developed considering that excellence, represented by the genre’s masters, is by no means far away.

2012 – I, Voidhanger Records