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7.0
More than a hundred years after the publication of “Dagon”, a story that (albeit in an embryonic way) begins to reveal the world of the Great Old Ones, HP Lovecraft's literary work continues to fascinate and inspire a vast portion of the metal universe, from Black Sabbath (the debut album “Behind The Wall Of Sleep”) to Electric Wizard's “Dunwich”, passing obviously through Metallica (“The Call of Ktulu”) and Celtic Frost (“Nocturnal Fear” and “Morbid Tales”).
Focusing on the extreme metal field, it is difficult, while listening to “Alienum”, not to go back in memory to the indescribable horror celebrated by the French The Great Old Ones (for those who have missed listening to them, we recommend at least the splendid, from the cover to the content, “TeKeLi-Li”). Unlike the latter, however, dedicated to a post-black metal that grants little freedom of action to the melody, in Starspawn Of Cthulhu the Lovecraftian imagery is declined through a series of songs with a decidedly doom imprint, in which a traditional component, daughter of Cathedral (“Ancient Visitor”, softened by a well-crafted keyboard insert), is progressively contaminated by a vast range of influences that make the work decidedly smooth.
The project, which after the departure of Domenico Groppo became a one-man band behind whose moniker hides Roberto Biasin (formerly of Last Century from Vicenza) reaches its full-length debut after some EPs (“The Cursed Vision”, “Tales From The Unknown”), the most recent of which was distributed by the Austrian label Talheim Records.
Maybe it's because solitude gives courage, as Celentano used to say, but with “Alienum” the multi-instrumentalist Biasin is not at all afraid of measuring himself against the Italian dark-prog of Jacula and Antonius Rex (“Melodies From Another Dimension”), nor of getting his hands dirty with some stoner components that bring his music closer to that of a Danzig even more gothic than the original (“Alien Crown”).
In the perspective of a world populated by presences that are feared even if they are barely perceived, in the dim light, the album takes on the heavy and desolate pace of Reverend Bizzarre's “In The Rectory” in “Yuggoth”, lets the sailing ship of Ahab (another band accustomed to narrating ancestral fears inspired by the depths of the sea) move among the suspended arpeggios of “Towards The Starlight”, retraces with a deep voice the same stoner doom paths beaten by Monolord in “They Come At Night” (in our opinion the best track of the collection and one of the potential singles), to then close the cycle by re-embracing the doom of “Ancient Visitors” with the final “Great Race of Yith”.
“Alienum” is therefore a promising debut, which, despite some perhaps slightly didactic passages – see the keyboards of “Great Race of Yith” or “Melodies from Another Dimension” – reveals a musician with solid writing, to be followed with attention and hope in future evolutions.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
