Return for Miguel Santos with his A Dream Of Poe, arrived with An Infinity Emerged to the second full length. The Portuguese musician, now based in Edinburgh, works mainly independently, using only the contribution of Paulo Pacheco for the writing of the lyrics, a vocalist (which, although not mentioned in the few notes at my disposal, should be the British Kaivan Saraei) and the touch of the well-known keyboardist guest Kostas Panagiotou (Pantheist). The sound of A Dream Of Poe is a gothic doom that has the undoubted merit of escaping some of the clichés of the genre, starting from the use of voice that, contrary to expectations, is the antipodes of the canonical baritone vocals or guttural traits, settling instead on very persuasive and delicate tones. Everything works quite well even if, in the long run, a little fatigue in the listening emerges: in fact, if the opener Egregore enjoys beautiful melodic lines, embellished by a beautiful guitar solo, the songs that follow are less brilliant and here, probably, it would have served a more decisive vocal timbre than the one undoubtedly beautiful but sometimes a bit whiny exhibited by Sarei. I don’t exclude that my evaluation derives from an involuntary form of fundamentalism, typical of the passionate devotee to a specific genre, but in a sonic environment like the one proposed by A Dream Of Poe it’s hard to digest Bellamy’s vocals like those that appear in The Isle Of Cinder. Having said that, the album is definitely good, although not very smooth, but do not forget that we are dealing with a genre like doom, so a little more effort in receiving the musical proposal must be budgeted. The last track, Macula, turns out to be a new excellent testimony of Santos’ compositional ability, which in this specific occasion manages to exhibit fully the different moods that go to make up a leaden overall picture but, at the same time, rather delicate; the atmospheres evoked are more melancholic than desperate and are aimed at the sketch of a widespread sadness but not less wearing. Precisely because of these aspects, in general, the approach to the genre of Santos is not at all obvious and this should be given to him without any doubt; all in all, An Infinity Emerged, for its characteristics would seem more suitable to the users of the doom of classic mold than to the admirers of the gothic death side of the genre. Intriguing, enveloping, formally irreproachable, but not yet essential.

2015 – Solitude Productions