Italian band Urna comprises of RM and MZ of label-mates Locus Mortis and Arcana Coelestia. Names these bands have been on the periphery of my radar and the Italians and their label have an esoteric and arcane air about them, which is certainly replicated with effect on Urna’s third full length ‘Iter ad Lucem.’ The title translates as ‘road to lamp’ or more naturally ‘path to light’ but as Urna appear to vocalise in Latin as well I am certainly not going to get any deeper into any pitiful attempts at translation than this.
Musically this is essentially funeral doom but then again looking at the album cover it illustrates that nothing is going to be quite that simple and this could spiral into other fractals of sound as the journey progresses. We are firstly taken through the mammoth regions of the two-tiered title track evolving over 20 minutes of time and indeed space. A weight laden expansive sound immediately booms in, drums rumble and guitars fluidly flail around them with a graceful flow. Vocals come in like they are breaking through from another galaxy and disrupting the space-time continuum. They are sinister and gravelly but sparse as the music breaks into a fragmentary ambience giving light relief before everything crashes in once more. It should be no surprise that this is a consuming and involving listen as the music picks you up and drags you all around like a dog with a rag in its mouth. Ghostly neo-classical piano passages break up the heaviosity before the second part of this epic ebbs in with a maudlin dissonance, which is abruptly swiped aside by a corrosive anger taking us into a place where fear dwells once more. There is a playful feel to the music as it emotes between passages of sparse piano tinkling ambience and downright oppressive gravity sucking dread and everything works really well together both musically and in my mind conceptually as well.
It’s all too easy to mention acts such as Esoteric and Evoken who could comfortably co-exist within the same realms as Urna. Similarly they strike as possibly being a terrifying proposition on stage. As the album goes into ‘K-TH-R’ tension is increased and although it is free-flowing in construction there is again a crushing intent here that pushes at the rib cage and threatens to implode the organs within. ‘Seferia Malkuth’ adds some strange drumming rhythms with biting vocals with a real Lovecraftian feel about it as far as my imagination is concerned. Intelligent and thought provoking, this is an album that is certainly not for all, which just adds to the appeal as far as I’m concerned. A quick trawl through ebay looking for more by Urna also provides the information that this is also available on gold vinyl for the real collectors out there.
http://www.myspace.com/urnaproject
http://www.atmf.net
