This coven slowed down a bit as far as gaps between the last couple of albums were concerned and perhaps this has helped things coagulate a bit, as far as ‘Moonlight Waltz,’ album nine for this Italian cult is concerned, there is a real energy about it. Plenty has changed over the years. When they formed TDV were more of a black metal entity and since then have gradually morphed, shaking off past collaborators on the way into a different beast but one whose fangs are just as sharply honed as before. ‘Suicide Vampire’ was described as extreme gothic metal and their mid-life output as death rock and gothic but without extreme elements, now they are referred as being electronic and industrial with EBM and darkwave elements. I personally think people have looked into this a bit too anally (and that is coming from a music reviewer). After the first few albums they have always adopted most of these styles into their range which has simply progressed along the way.
What you do notice as the incredibly strong opener ‘Keeper Of Secrets’ unravels cleverly around a melodic musical box is that the orchestration and symphonic effects have very much gone up a notch. This is no doubt due to the fact that they have worked here with Luca Bellanova and the Classical Music Academy of Rome and the result is that the dramatic level of the compositions are really in your face. That is not all as far as guests are concerned, Snowy Shaw adds his voice to Sonya Scarlet’s on this particular track and as we progress a couple of others are going to pop up. The band have always been good at ballads and the gentler ‘Fly Away’ augmented by soothing strings is perfect in that respect. There has to be some piano really at the start of ‘Moonlight Waltz’ and this is another gentle number on the whole allowing Sonya to enchant as the spiky insistent cinematic stabbing part of the melody gets its hooks in, it’s a bit like Herrmann’s well known Psycho theme or something by Goblin, although toned down to match the mood of the song. ‘Carmilla’ is much more tempestuous and also has resulted in a David Bracci helmed video which you can find online. This oozes mystery and romance just like a vampire film as well as a providing musical accompaniment to Sheridan La Fanu’s literary muse. The violin particularly drives this one along on a wild jig. Every song has a real character there is a bouncy almost synth-pop feel leading into ‘Sangue’ but the real surprise comes on the cover of Italian band Mecano’s ‘Figlio Della Luna.’ Like me reading the title and band name you may not have a clue but I think once you hear it you will recognise this one instantly and it is a gorgeous cover. I absolutely love the piano work on ‘Black Madonna’ again it reminds of a sinister Italian horror film, speaking of which there is ‘Le Grand Guignol’ which has none other than Cadaveria joining in on vocals.
One thing I should mention is that vocally this is not all about Scarlet. Fabian Varesi adds his backing tones to much of the album and providing quite a lot of depth in doing so. His compositional work and keyboard playing should get quite a bit of the praise here as well. It’s hard not mentioning every single number, as I stated they all have something unique going on. Skipping to the oddly titled closer ‘Medousa’ though, I have to mention the final guest vocalist who is Eva Breznikar multi talented instrumentalist and singer of Laibach fame, which to me is a match made in heaven (perhaps that should be hell but you get the point).
It’s all too easy making puns about this being a bloody good album but it is the one I have enjoyed the most in recent years from TDV. Hopefully there will be some live dates to go with it too and if you are after something darkly gothic as we go into 2011 you can’t really go wrong here.
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