Dessiderium – Keys to the Palace

vote
6.5

• Band:
  Dessiderium
• Duration: 01:02:21
• Available from: 03/14/2025
• Label:

• WillowTip Records

Dessiderium is the project of Alex Haddad, a young musician already guitarist of Arkaik and the last, never Domi, Atheist. “Keys to the Palace” is the fifth album of ours, first for a label of a certain importance such as WillowTip. The accompanying bio underlines how the material of this last disc comes from very different periods and was born during the compositions of other albums and then be set aside and reused now.
“Keys to the Palace” is not an easy job at all, let's face it, starting from a tracklist that includes six long and articulated compositions. In turn, “Pollen for the Bees” and “Keys to the Palace” are divided into parts, respectively two and three. Musically we are in a certainly progressive territory, certainly equally technical and partially extreme. There is really everything, in “Keys to the Palace”, starting from the progressive and symphonic Death, passing through Obliviscaris, Born of Osiris, Devin Townsend, Ihsahn, Periphery, Dream Theater, the Atheist themselves.
Structurally we are faced with the mixture of a progressive and technical approach without any of the two outperforms ever the other: in this sense, the “in the Midst of May” Open, in its abundant seven minutes, manages to bring home a good overall result, alternating clean voices, growls, changes of time, modern guitars and a good presence of the battery, which grants several passages in which it is in the forefront.
The elements that make up this new work certainly do not end here, because a certain love for neoclassicism emerges (in the guitar plots) and for the symphonic matrix of some arrangements. The subsequent “Dover Hendrix” is more structured towards the progressive death metal, but there are still many varied influences, including a very suggestive piano interlude. All the rest continues according to this high number of coordinates that alternate, sometimes generating more angry atmospheres, other times more reflective and dreamy.
It is a work on the interesting paper, “Keys to the Palace”, but, in our opinion, without sufficient cohesion to be remembered. After repeated plays, it is really difficult to remember this or that moment, even when it comes to theoretically easy situations to assimilate, such as the melodies of clean voice; Very often the amount of input, in our humble opinion, surpasses the quality, putting it in the background.
In addition to this, a precise concept, if not a fantasy/naturalistic mold, never emerges, and the artwork itself does not shine for originality, to the point that, in the very first look, we thought that that in question was a new atmospheric black metal project, a little epic and a little baroque, on the skyforest or anchyt master style. Overall, this new dessiderium remains in short, a still interlocutory record, unfortunately.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhahzn1nhku