EPITAPH – Path To Oblivion

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7.5

• Bands:
  EPITAPH
• Duration: 00:41:01
• Available from: 12/20/2024
• Label:

• My Kingdom Music

Streaming not yet available

With Epitaph and their new album “Path To Oblivion” it is possible to indulge in an exciting dive into the history of Italian metal.
The Veronese can boast, among other things, real quarters of nobility since the rhythm section, composed of Mauro Tollini on drums and Nicola Murari on bass, participated in the creation of that “Land Of Mystery” in 1985, the band's first album. Black Hole, which over the years has become a true cult of psychedelic dark doom; the first always as a drummer, while the second as a guitarist.
In this new work, after the usual instrumental intro we start off in style with “Embraced By Worms”, with a main riff very close to the legendary “The Well Of Souls” by Candlemass: well structured, enthralling and very catchy, it is truly an excellent business card and one of the most successful pieces of the lot. The rest of the album, however, is no different: emblematic is “Nameless Demon”, characterized by a slower pace and atmospheric inserts that embellish its structure, as also happens in the central part of “Condemned To Flesh” and in the closing of “Fall From Grace” at the end of the record; “Kingdom Of Slumber”, the first single, is instead the song that in general seems closest to the history of the Italian dark sound, which has always been balanced between progressive rock and doom metal: truly successful, it is capable of effectively painting the images with the instruments dreamlike described by the text.
The voice of the new singer Ricky del Pane can be compared to those of Candlemass and Black Sabbath, and in particular to Robert Lowe, historical frontman also of the Texan masters Solitude Aeternus: well set, technical, incisive, truly a remarkable performance. Also noteworthy is the ghostly cover by the young Transylvanian artist Luciana Nedelea.
It is worth spending a few more words on the relationships of this third work by Epitaph with the so-called Italian dark sound, of which it is right to mention at least a couple of key figures such as Antonio Bartoccetti, known for his creatures Antonius Rex and Jacula, and Renato Carpaneto in art Mercy, singer of Malombra and Il Segno del Comando (as well as of the neofolk Ianva), and the crucial Genoese record company Black Widow Records, with historic headquarters in via del Campo: compared to the two previous works, “Crawling Out From The Crypt” from 2014 and “Claws” from 2017, it seems that this filiation is gradually waning on our part; still found in the atmospheric moments of the longer and more complex pieces and in the two short instrumentals at the beginning and middle of the album, it is slightly 'normalised' and internationalised, especially due to the change of singer.
It was in fact in the vocal style of Emiliano Cioffi, decidedly new wave and which immediately referred to Mercy, that the peculiar characteristics of that purely local sound could be recognised; Ricky dal Pane, author of a remarkable performance, as already underlined, is instead irrefutably more metal in the classic sense. The slight departure from the component linked to the tradition of the Italian dark sound can also be found in the approach to songwriting, very essential, homogeneous and less progressive, which on the one hand makes us lose a bit of that aura of mystery that characterizes the history of Epitaph, on the other hand, makes listening much smoother.
The world moves forward and it is also understandable that Epitaph's proposal may change slightly with the passage of time, and that the Veronese have opted, also thanks to the rotation at the microphone, for a small swerve towards the more canonical doom metal and towards a more compact sound. This doesn't mean that Epitaph have 'modernised': curiously, the previous two albums could have been more current, while “Path Of Oblivion” seems more to refer to the 1980s doom tradition, to which it is indeed a personal and heartfelt tribute.
However, it is still possible to recognize in the plots of the very close-knit rhythm section and in the well-studied instrumental digressions that enrich the songs – the performance of guitarist Lorenzo Locatelli is also absolutely valid – that ancestral magic that gave prestige to “Land Of Mystery” by Black Hole , which still today never ceases to amaze new generations of listeners who are passionate about the most mystical and sepulchral – in every sense 'underground' – side of the vast universe doom.
Another sensational proof from one of the pillars of the darkest Italian metal, who continues not to fail with a record and worthily perpetuates, with courage and respect, a legacy that is certainly cumbersome.