Day: May 30, 2014

It doesn’t happen often to listen, in the extreme doom field, to a well structured debut, played with knowledge of the cause and produced in a satisfactory way, even more when it’s a single musician to take care of all aspects. The fear of running into a sequence of reverberated sounds and an unintelligible howl coming from some underground cavity is averted as soon as it starts this Beyond the Grave, first work of the Italian one man band In Lacrimaes Et Dolor. Noctis offers six songs that, if they do not scream a miracle, however, surprise positively for their compositional maturity: the disc stands quietly thanks to a valuable melodic sense that serves as a trait d’union between scores placed between funeral and death doom, with some sprinkling of depressive and dark ambient. In terms of influences, although not explicitly stated, I found a lot of melodic funeral ascribable to the Russian scene especially in A Broken Man and Fallen In Grief, but in general the sound of In Lacrimaes Et Dolor lives mainly on keyboards and piano, relegating the guitar to a role of mere accompaniment; Very good also the growl, close to that of Pim Blankenstein of Officium Triste and very sober even the clean vocals, mostly recited; the title track itself, a painful and melancholic track stands out as one of the best episodes, while the self-titled song carries with it the noble mark of Shape Of Despair, thanks to a touch of keyboard that can be traced back to Jarno Salomaa. Having had the opportunity to exchange a few words in chat with Noctis, I had the distinct feeling of having come across a guy with clear ideas, but also sufficiently humble, who considers this record only a starting point on which to graft several improvements; in fact, although obviously there are margins for improvement, Beyond The Grave is already now a very good example of funeral death doom played with passion and competence. If I were in charge of a label in this field, I would make something more than a simple thought on a similar prospect.

2013 – GS Productions