Day: August 26, 2016

Although it should not be done, it is spontaneous to associate the different record labels to a musical genre rather than others: specifically, from Argonauta Records, which includes in its roster, among others, authentic musical agitators such as Nibiru or Sepvlcrvm, we usually expect albums in some place that is halfway between doom, sludge post metal and experimentalism never ends in themselves. Not a little surprising, then, to find in the competent clutches of Gero, boss of the Genoese label, the historic Finnish band Throes Of Dawn, since in its best years (we speak of the last decade), had given the prints of the beautiful works (on all Quicksilver Clouds) having as common denominator melancholic melodies inserted into a dark gothic doom fabric. It is even more surprising to see how, six years after the slightly opaque The Great Fleet Of Echoes, the group founded in 1994 by vocalist Henri Koivula (now also in the line-up of the masterful Shape Of Despair) and guitarist and keyboardist Jani Heinola is finally landed in a form of progressive traits certainly dark, due in part to the last Anathema but the strong references to pinkfloydian sounds. The compositional scheme could be dismissed as simple and linear: the songs open in a soft way, often rarefied, leaving room for acoustic arpeggios, piano touches and a voice free of any harshness, and then open irresistibly in Gilmourian solos, all, none excluded, able to tear more than one tear to those who have lived in almost real time the exploits of the English musician and his incomparable band. Easy or, even worse, derivative? No, because in the meantime certain nuances must be handled with care and competence, but what is more interesting, here, is the emotional intensity that the album is able to release in every song and, to make the difference, is above all the predisposition with which the listener approaches Our Voices Shall Remain: if you are looking for something that shocks, disturbs and overturns with force our (few) established certainties, then you are definitely wrong address, while it will not be so for those who are looking for a form of art in music that can move, raising the spirit through a painful cathartic process. Here lacks, of course, the sense of tragedy evoked by the best melodic funeral, but the turmoil that the guitar of Jani Heinola can produce with masterful continuity leads to a final result not too far away, leaving as tangible legacy the emotion that takes over when listening to songs such as Lifelines, The Understanding and, above all, the final The Black Wreath Of Mind, which magnificently closes the work thanks to the magical combination of the six strings and the piano. Hoping, probably in vain, that someone among the progressive onanists of the good old days will put away for a moment his copy of Wish You Were Here yellowed by time and try to give a listen to Our Voices Shall Remain, we can only recommend this wonderful return of Throes Of Dawn to those who want to be lulled by emotions that draw sap from the past but live and sublimate in the present.

2016 – Argonauta Records