Artist: Mandragora Scream
Title: Volturna
Type: CD
Label: Lunatic Asylum / Massacre Records

In the wake of Lacuna Coil, Italian Gothic Metal has grown exponentially in the post millennial years - bands such as Theatres Des Vampyres, Cadaveria, and Graveworm have begun to make significant ripples outside of their geographical borders. There is something inherently dated about the sound of Italian Goth bands though - a generalisation yes, but one that is definitely not meant to apply to all aspects of Italian music. Madragora Scream, for example, sound like they’re a basically modelled on The 90’s output of both The 69 Eyes and Collide. It’s not a bad thing by any means, but in a world where there are so many bands pushing themselves to sound as good as possible, it comes off in places as rather lazy. Even front-woman Morgan Lacroix sounds a hell of a lot like a post Shadow Project Eva O for most of the album.

The opening track ‘Lui’ is a subdued slice of Cradle of Filth-a-like keyboard work circa 1997 that would have been more effective without the jarring industrial noises and worked down to half the length. ‘I’m Goin’ Alone’ on it’s own would have been a more effective introduction - again it has those dated keyboard sounds and the production/mixing sounds a little lacklustre, but this is more like what I’d expect from Morgan et al. ‘The Circus’ has an air of Moonspell to it, with its long intro before getting into it’s stride with an up tempo bit of Bass vs. Keys fuelled 90’s Goth rock. ‘Deciever’ borders in sound on 90’s Collide before whipping out the standard industrial rock riffs for the chorus… it’s not a bad track but all too familiar. ‘Breakin’ Dawn’ on the other hand could be a 69 Eyes track if Jyrki had a sex change - Morgan’s voice does lack a certain richness on this, which I think is more a sign of bad production rather than her performance. What’s with all the missing “G’s” in these gong titles? ‘Killin’ Game’ is another one - it is easily one of the best sounding tracks on the album thus far, but there seems to be this obsession with sounding like a cross between ASP and Collide running through this release. ‘Blindness’ on the other hand is a stereotypical maudlin myspace quality Goth track that could have done with being left out of the final track listing. ‘Farewell’ sounds like it has had the most attention paid to it out of any track - I’d say that it almost sounds like a different band rather than a different album, the best of the batch so far. ‘A Chance From Him’ continues the decent production but lets itself down with that boring American style guitar riff that detracts from an otherwise great song. ‘The Revenant’s Love Eternal’ makes use of some slightly better sounding keyboards for it’s intro and falls flat on the text book guitars in the verse but all together it’s a good song. ‘The Callin’ From Isaiah’ continues this trend with some interesting electronics and well performed vocals let down again by this standard American rock guitar. ‘Bang Bang’ is a nice if pointless cover of the Nancy Sinatra song made famous amongst today’s youth by the Kill Bill films - so it’s not surprising that someone finally did a cover of it in this way. ‘The Seagull’s Creed’ is a baffling title that finally injects some life into the guitar work, if only for brief periods in the song. Next up is a Visage cover in the form of ‘Fade to Grey’ - I wonder if Visage will become the trendy band to cover seeing as every band in the world over the past ten years has covered every Depeche Mode song ever written… maybe not, it’s not a particularly original take on the song but it certainly works. Finally ‘Nails’ closes the album with an attempt a making a subtle symphonic / ambient track that could have had a lot of fat trimmed.

All in All the album is hit and miss, the production and guitars ultimately let a lot of the album down despite the good song writing and solid performances. What Madragora Scream really need to do is get in the studio with a good producer who will really give the songs the attention they deserve instead of one that would sound like they would rush the job as on here. If you’re a fan of the band you’ll undoubtedly already have this pre-ordered, but if you’re not I’d maybe give this one either time to grow on you, or otherwise check out some of the band’s earlier offerings. http://www.madragorscream.com
http://www.myspace.com/madragora.scream

Sean M. Palfrey

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