Il Vuoto - Vastness (2019)
With his debut album, released back in
2015, the one-man band of Il Vuoto served up a powerful concoction of
atmospheric funeral doom, with the art, titles, and music coming
together in impressive union. The follow-up album has finally
arrived, and with its hour's worth of material spread over five
tracks, it certainly makes for a worthy succession.
The band's orchestrator, Matteo Gruppi,
puts care and consideration into every part of the album, and while
the track titles have been made somewhat less theatrical (with the
previous names including “I, Essence of Nothingness” and “Through
Mirrors I Saw the Ghost of Me”), the comparative directness of
titles such as “Weakness” and “Her Fragile Limbs” opens them
up for more expansive story-telling. The lyrical approach follows a
similar course of restraint, with the melancholic vulnerabilities
they express meshing right into the dirge-like guitar tones and
melodies of suffering.
While the drum-work rarely gets brought
to the forefront, Gruppi does a great job of using it to reinforce
and intensify the songs' rhythms. Likewise, the supporting synth
textures are subtle, but present throughout the majority of the
music, which moves through a nicely wide range of dynamics and moods
over the course of the album, while retaining its sorrowful doom
base. Closing out with a relatively short instrumental piece, “As
the Whole World Failed”, Il Vuoto maintains his careful control
over the emotional direction to the end. There's a lot to savor
within the songs, and their large size is put to good use in
furthering the moods, rather than just stretching to fill time. Well
worth the wait, this album is well-suited for cold weather, or just
for savoring some finely-made dark atmospheres. CD copies can be
ordered from Hypnotic Dirge Records, while digital (and the rest of
Il Vuoto's catalog) is up on his BandCamp page.
~ Gabriel
For Fans Of; Descend Into
Despair, Funerary, HellLight, Nonsun, Towards Atlantis Lights
~
No comments:
Post a Comment