Valery 2012
Fire and ice… Italian sextet hit the right heat on their third album.
Seems that currently there are two ways for a female-fronted metal band to operate, one employing the operatic stance and the other taking the folky path, which comes more rarely yet also more gratify. Here’s a great example of the latter as Laura De Luca’s voice possess a well-measured dose of huskiness to go along with memorable riffage and keyboardist’s Giancarlo Guarrera’s angry growl from elegantly spiky “Lust”, where an oratorio choir kicks in, forward to an orchestral sway of “Days And Lies” and beyond, to proggy rage in “The Life Before”.
And if the arabesques in “Against Windmills” demonstrate high-spirited quixotic angularity, the cello-cut “Egonist” sounds rather glacial, yet the beauty of its chorus is irresistible, as is the heavy disco groove of “Mindrama” and gentle piano running through “Innerenemy”. All threads of the group’s skillfully crafted tapestry are joined on “The Journey”, a kind of grand finale, leaving a slight trace of unfulfillingness, but there’s a sense that the record’s follow-up may rectify this.
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