The Portuguese The Chapter is one of the many bands formed in the last decade that, after a sample release, have waited a long time before giving birth to a first full length. The band from Lisbon tries to enter the dark gothic strand, introducing in its sound the robustness of doom, and does it with a good result, keeping faith with the consolidated Lusitanian translation that comes to life from Moonspell but also passes by less famous but equally relevant names such as Heavenwood, Painted Black and A Dream Of Poe. The vocalist Pedro Rodrigues performs very well placing in the rough parts a valuable growl, while the clean parts remind those of Jonas Renkse of Katatonia and even some melodic openings bring back to the (in my opinion) golden period of Tonight’s Decision and Discouraged Ones. If we then add that, when the sound moves on gothic doom shores, the pleasant reference at times seems to become the best Evereve, the picture that presents itself is that of a band that tries to find solutions in some way less predictable, precisely because it seems to draw from sources less obvious than what is done by other groups. The eight songs that go to make up the work are all very good, each balanced in its oscillation between a soul more heavily metal and more melancholic and gothic: certainly the two initial songs, the title track with many facets and Shattered Emotions, more rarefied and close to the melodic death doom, tear the veil on the potential of The Chapter, whose work proves to be convincing and always imbued with a good degree of emotion, both when Moonspell is the lighthouse (Aenima Vipera) and when Katatonia is (For A Ghost, To Live For) thanks to the skill of the band from Setubal in freeing themselves from a calligraphic interpretation by inserting frequent variations of rhythm. A good test that has the only drawback of a combination of moniker (The Chapter) and album title (Angels & Demons) that, from the Google search, returns practically only information about Dan Brown’s best seller or about the movie that was based on it, and this does not help an effective dissemination of information about the band; but when it’s the music that speaks, the Lusitanians put on the plate a mastery of the genre not taken for granted, such as to assume and hope that this is just the new beginning of a musical journey started on the right foot.

2017 – Independent