vote
7.0
- Band:
Church of the Sea - Duration: 00:31:00
- Available from: 11/04/2025
- Label:
-
These Hands Melt
Streaming not yet available
By committing the first sin, Eva also carried out the first act of freedom: biting the apple of the knowledge tree is a conscious choice of disobedience to the dogmatic order, a gesture of independence and self -determination. Eva is the first rebel and for this reason she is rejected by the earthly paradise, but that rebellion earned her the right to refuse a life in which you can have everything on condition not to decide anything. This progenitor of humanity not so much literally, as because it is a pioneer of self -affirmation, is the inspiring muse of the second album of the Athenian trio Church of the Sea.
In his new work, the band continues along the street undertaken with “Odalisque” without excessive variations in the route, but with some noteworthy news. The most immediately perceptible concerns the sound, significantly lightened compared to the debut album: the sulfur bouquet and anthracite of past productions has in fact left room for more airy sounds, which emphasize the 'voids' on which a large part of songwriting is held.
As the matter is mainly made of emptiness, in fact, so “Eva” is played a lot on the echoes, on the suspensions, on the resounding of almost percussion cable (synthetic) and on the ethereal vocal lines traced by Cantane Irene, a little priestess of a Mediterranean cult, a little heir of the post-rock voices nineties. The result is a very minimal and very elegant Doom-Gaze, which favors the atmosphere on the search for the riff.
To this first sound 'soul', a second, most Gothic and metropolitan, who looks to the aforementioned post-rock, the sludge, the new wave and partly to the drone, and which tends to emerge progressively with the advance of listening, is opposed.
The two identities on which the Church of the Sea seem to play their game are now united in an original and effective synthesis, now one in marked dominance on the other. A good example of the first case is “The Siren's Choice”, which is also one of the most successful songs of the Platter: the dialogue between the Soundge guitar and the transformed sang tells of a cliff Doom, which vaguely refers to a rarer version of our Devil's bridge.
Nightly oriented towards more impalpable and sophisticated inspirations are the two subsequent traces, “Eva” and “Widow”, in which rock suggestions are reread in an almost ritual key. The most recent Chelsea Wolfe comes to mind, Emma Ruth Rundle but also another musician of Greek origins, Ioanna Gika, from which the Church of the Sea resume both a certain shade of vibrations that some compositional solutions (especially in the contrasts between algid and rough sounds, not innovative but certainly well calibrated).
As the album is carried out, you enter more and more deeply in a stain of distortions, mysterious synths and drone dilations on which Campanelli are tinked and reverberate drums: “Garden of Eden” and “Churchyard” are also the songs in which the guitar plays a more predominant role, in a sort of gradual erosion of the protagonism of the voice that dominates, instead, the first half, listening.
While “How to Build a Universe PT II” thinned out, you discover ourselves pleasantly hypnotized, even if not much surprised: “Eva” is a disk of great good taste, and how many things of good taste does not take great risks. However, if the review intrigued you, give it a chance. It's worth it.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
