vote
5.5
- Bands:
AEVUM - Duration: 00:33:49
- Available from: 01/17/2025
- Label:
-
Darktunes Music Group
Streaming not yet available
On their fifth album, the Turin-based Aevum have ideas for a few new tracks, so much so that the total duration is just over half an hour.
If you then analyze the structure of the album in detail, you will notice that what they propose with “Kaleidoscope” – this is the title of their latest work – are nine pieces, four of which are instrumental. On the remaining five songs which are a little more structured between voices and music, to define the proposed genre, we find ourselves faced (as it was in the predecessor “Glitch”) with that mix between electronic music and industrial metal towards which they had veered compared to the their first albums.
And it is precisely on the mix of registers that Aevum have always focused a lot, and the script is also repeated in this “Kaleidosope”: in the opening song “D20” – one of the two then revived only in an instrumental version, together with “Fog Of Fear” – between male (Richard, also on keyboards) and female (Lucille, who returns to lyric in some verses) singing, it starts with medieval flutes and then flows into loops electronic, with choirs, spoken voices and atmospheres between steam punk and electronic dance.
If in the previous “Glitch” we had heard interesting ideas, in this new work there are nothing new, because for example in “Be A Lady” we find the melodic death part with the accelerations of TheNola on the drums and Paul on the bass which results in the flat complex. “Nightshade”, with its initial piano, recalls Nightwish's debut “Angels Fall First” and ends in a crescendo, with the intertwining of Emanuel and Lord's guitars, only to then stop with “Dark Tunes”, an instrumental interlude electro-ambient, bridge for the two most elaborate pieces: “Fog Of Fear” with the powerful growl at the opening and whispered parts recalls the trademark of Cradle Of Filth, while the atmospheres medieval and gothic of “The Inquisition” have distant echoes of bands like Therion, Haggard and the aforementioned Nightwish. The conclusion is left to another instrumental piece, “Ashes To Ashes”, with samples and dance rhythms, now a trademark of Aevum, and then, to follow, the two other versions without the vocals.
At the end of the brief listening we find ourselves realizing that this “Kaleidoscope” really brings too little newness or maturation; it must be admitted that the Turin group is always in the spirit of experimentation, but when examining the songs they fail to demonstrate any steps forward compared to their previous work.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM