Day: March 16, 2015

After having talked about Apostate’s latest album in the past few days, let’s stay in Ukraine to see what Autumnia‘s release has to offer. While in the case mentioned above, it was the new album of a recently reformed band, in this case we are faced with a retrospective work that combines in a single package, in the double CD format, the first two albums of a combo with a more recent history but also more famous. It is interesting to be able to follow the evolution of Alexander Glavniy’s band over the years by listening to a couple of good albums. The musician, with the help of one of the best voices in the industry as that of Vladislav Shahin of Mournful Gust, published in 2004 a debut album really excellent, probably a bit too devoted at times to the very first Anathema and My Dying Bride, but also for this reason able to recall in a competent way and with due intensity the seminal sounds that, a few years after having held the baptism, those same historical bands would have abandoned. Dramatic and melodic in the right doses, In Loneliness Of Two Souls introduced in the best way the name of Autumnia to the proscenium of European doom. In By The Candles Obsequial, two years later, heavy gothic influences entered the sound, accentuated by the massive use of keyboards and the contribution of a female voice in a song that, on the one hand, enriched and made the proposal more attractive, but on the other hand made the Ukrainian duo’s work appear less genuine and more artificial. Technically superior to its predecessor, the album aroused a better impression at first glance and then showed not always too deep: definitely a good work, in any case, in some way preparatory to the further step towards even more elegant sounds that would have happened with O Funeralia, the last album of Autumnia dated 2009. This collection published by Solitude, arrived after a long period of silence, could presage a return of the band with unreleased material. The loss of Shahin, who in 2010 chose to devote himself exclusively to his Mournful Gust, is certainly not insignificant, given the value of the subject, but beyond all I’m quite curious to see what solutions could opt for today Glavniy, a musician who, in my humble opinion, has in its ropes the potential to compose the album of great depth that so far has only touched on the occasion of the albeit excellent debut album.

2015 – Solitude Productions