Month: March 2019

Depressive black in Italy is a subgenre perhaps not very widespread but certainly performed at a mostly excellent level by its performers, among whom we find Afraid of Destiny, a typical example of a band born as a solo project and then evolved over time into a more composite reality and, above all, able to propose their music live as well. Afraid of Destiny‘s activity has been quite intense in these six years that have elapsed since the debut demo, so, in addition to several minor releases, we find three full lengths of which the latest is this S.I.G.H.S., released by Talheim Records, although in fact the work includes for the most part the revisiting of songs composed by founder Adimere when he was still not even of age. In fact, the first tracks of the album would seem to show more of a band devoted to an atmospheric and reasoned, albeit dark, black, well represented by the very good Shells, on which Thomas Major of Deadspace offers a great guitar contribution, but it is in the second half of the work that a more melancholic and folded into a background negativity takes the field, which sees as its ideal prologue Everything I Feel, a dialogue taken from the film Her on which poignant piano notes are set. The long instrumental I’m Crying (from the first full length Tears Of Solitude, as well as the concluding Killed By Life) represents a beautiful interlude full of atmospheres and melodies that show a more melancholic and poignant than despairing face, best introducing the sorrowful acoustic feel of Cursed and Alone and the piano interlude Melancholy Venice, before the aforementioned Killed By Life, a track that is as long (even longer than it was in its first draft thanks to an instrumental appendix) as it is intense, optimally closes the album by describing the maelstrom of feelings strewn along the path that leads to an inescapable as it is tragic conclusion. S.I.G.H.S. (which is moreover an acronym for Still I Gently Hide Sadness) is a work that winds its way along various stylistic paths as is to be expected when the songs it contains were composed in different eras and thus a few years apart: we thus find episodes of black tout court such as Take Me Home, Death together with melancholic acoustic frescoes that lead back to dark doom sounds, but everything nevertheless coexists without too much forcing; at least on this occasion the depressive feeling is conveyed musically (and also at the level of vocal interpretation by R. F. Sinister) more with a sense of resignation than of impotent rage: this allows Afraid Of Destiny to be liked not only by listeners gravitating in the black sphere but also by those who like to be lulled by somber and at times intimist sounds. Considering that a little bit the whole history of the band has been, until now, characterized by releases also aimed at reassembling or recovering songs with a more dated genesis and that the main composer Adimere is still very young, I like to think that S.I.G.H.S. could be for Afraid Of Destiny a sort of definitive compendium of the first 5-6 years of their career, preparatory to the creation of new unreleased material able to consolidate the name of this reality with a great potential not yet fully expressed.

2019 – Talheim Records