The words Italian and metal rarely make a good combination in my books. Although there are a few exceptions, the first things that spring to mind are the hordes of frilly shirt wearing Rhapsody clones playing synth-heavy cheese-fests about dragons, princesses and elves, or the wishy-washy third-rate gothic/doom acts that My Kingdom Music seem to snap up in their dozens. If there’s one thing the Italians do especially well though, it is horror films and any album that hints at an Italian Horror theme is worth at least checking out.
So, Macabre… is essentially two long tracks that adds up to 43 minutes in total, and its overriding characteristics are its crawling pace and funereal atmosphere. Perhaps not the best album to listen to when you are trying to wake up, and as with most albums that fall within the funeral doom sub-genre this is quite a challenging listening experience. The first track, ‘Mater Mortalis Tenebrarum’ arrives with an overblown sense of tragedy, as swathes of keyboards emit an equal sense of horror and mourning. A catastrophic bassline underpins all of this with a brooding sense of unease, as though something is going to reach up from beneath you and drag you into the depths of hell. This is a great album to listen to in a darkened room, where you can let the music take you into an eerie rundown cemetery, thick with fog and a spine-tingling ambience before being drawn underground into a dank and dingy crypt where everything is illuminated by sepia-esque candlelight flickering in the cold. It has the atmosphere of a film such as Andrea Bianci’s Burial Ground, or Tombs Of The Blind Dead (I should probably stick with Italian references but oh well).
The second track, ‘Graveyard Zombie Horizon (Ballata Mortale)’ feels rather like the post-tragedy mourning has kicked in and has one visualising a barren land drained of all life, while a fearsome wind howls away. Yeah truthfully it can feel rather like time has stood still and if you’re not in the right mind-frame it is a bit of an endurance test. Nevertheless, the last few minutes are truly haunting, utilising a classical composition that isn’t a million miles away from Beethovens 5th Symphony and going out with an apocalyptic bang. Finding this as a separate track on YouTube actually surprised me as to just how well it works by itself without the other 35+ minutes before. As with most stuff in this style it has the propensity to drag, although the horror ambiences do elevate it above the black, tear-infested ocean of funeral doom band sound-alikes. In all truthfulness I think I wanted to like this more than I actually did, although it did grow on me after half a dozen listens and when I really sat down and concentrated on the music. Still, if you find the funeral doom hearse drives too slow, this is unlikely to win you over.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eoOWnxxwJ4&feature=share
http://www.facebook.com/pages/THE-UNDERGRAVE-EXPERIENCE/258597890853517
Luci Herbert
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