Full length debut for the Italian female doom band SaturninE, of which we have already had occasion to talk about the ep of the same name in 2012. Reassembled the line-up with the change of vocalist (which today is the Belgian Katrien) the girls have recorded the album that should sweep away any doubt (if any) about their actual value. Mors Vocat is an album that does not give discounts from the point of view of impact, since SaturninE continue their path made of a direct approach and with limited space for melodic solutions: the doom element that obviously dominates the sound finds its counterbalance in an almost punk attitude, so the album, contrary to the habits of the genre, turns out to be much meaner, bitterly angry, rather than melancholically folded on itself. The vitriolic voice of Katrien is completely devoid of any variation, directed as it is to pour on a hostile world all its painful disapproval, but the intensity of the interpretation more than makes up for this theoretical limit. Compared to the ep you can appreciate an increase in the parts of solo guitar, moments that in any case eschew any ambition of virtuosity preferring rather impact and providing the individual tracks with some imprint of reference. Yes, because the monolithic nature of the work ends up being in the long run something to be reckoned with, especially for those who don’t have an excessive feeling for doom or occasional relationships with it. Despite (or maybe even because of) this, Mors Vocat is a great record that, probably, should make even better live; sin, in this regard, that the tour undertaken by SaturninE with the great Abysmal Grief has touched only for two dates in April dates the Italian soil. An essential and direct doom, definitely not very feminine if with such term we wanted to banally evoke something particularly delicate, which sees the best examples in Bones And Regrets, thanks to the melodic openings at the end of the song, and Crimson Sand, intense and rocky, where ours go to compete with the best Doomraiser. A really good album and that, all things considered, represents only the beginning of a path that promises to be of extreme interest for the most attentive doomsters.

2015 – Terror from Hell Records