Day: March 13, 2018

Towards Atlantis Lights is a new band made up of musicians of a certain name within the international doom scene. The project features Italian musician Ivano Zara (Void Of Silence) on guitar, and with him comes drummer Ivano Olivieri: together with them we find another name that betrays the same origins, that of the English Riccardo Veronese (Aphonic Threnody, Dea Marica, Arrant Saudade), here on bass, and the Greek keyboard player and singer (but active in his career mainly between Belgium, Holland and England in bands such as Pantheist, Wijlen Wij, in Daniel Neagoe’s Clouds and, in the past, in Aphonic Threnody themselves). From such a team it was reasonable to expect a work of a certain value, and the result does not disappoint the expectations: Towards Atlantis Lights put on stage an idea of funeral death doom with melodic traits, characterized by a constant search for intense and emotionally impacting atmospheres. Dust Of Aeons is an album that lasts for almost an hour, with the opening track alone taking up half of that time: The Bunker Of Life unfolds exhibiting two aspects of the sound offered, as it presents a typically funeral part, with bradycardic rhythms and a guitar work aimed at weaving magnificent melodies, alternating with passages with clean vocals that apparently seem to break the tension but that, in fact, are preparatory to its further increase every time the growl and the more canonical and granitic riffs come back. The next track, Babylon’s Hanging Gardens, is a rather interlocutory one, in the sense that it doesn’t leave any particular traces, acting as a buffer between the two key episodes of the work, The Bunker Of Life and Alexandria’s Library, which, perhaps for a greater synthesis, turns out to be the highest moment of Dust Of Aeons, especially in its second part when Ivan Zara weaves a beautiful guitar melody that leads to a final with a high evocative potential. Greeting Mausolus’ Tomb closes in the best way an album that is obviously addressed, for the characteristics set out above, to the purest doom fans, those who have the patience to wait as long as necessary to the mass of notes poured into the work to recompose, after several listenings, in yet another musical experience able to provide emotions in quantity. Having said that, hoping that Towards Atlantis Lights will not turn out to be an extemporaneous project but can find their own continuity in the years to come, the feeling is that this quartet of fine musicians has margins to further improve a proposal already of excellent level, pruning it of some interlocutory passage that emerges here and there during the work. Finally, we have to mention the magnificent artwork, also made in Italy by Francesco Gemelli, one of the most requested and appreciated graphic designers of the moment.

2018 – Transcending Obscurity Records