By Monk
Now and again, an album comes along that slowly crawls its way into the deepest, innermost recesses of your aural psyche, casting a shadow that is immovable and impermeable, wrapping you in a darkness that is impenetrable but at the same time ushering you into a light that is both blinding and welcoming to an enervating and redemptive new dawn. The appropriately titled ‘Ombra’, the second album from Italian progressive death metallers The Moor casts just such a shadow…
The band’s sense of ambition is obvious from the epic “intro”, ‘Il Tema dell’Ombra’, which clocks in at epic three-plus minutes and sets the atmosphere in suitably cinematic style. Lead track, and first single,’The Overlord Disease’ then heaves into view like a juggernaut emerging from the hazy horizon of a desert highway, driving towards you with inexorable inevitably, trapping you in its headlights like a hypnotized rabbit, willing yourself to be splattered all over the tarmac by what you cannot stop coming. Then, at the last minute, the invisible driver swerves and hits you with the merest of glancing blows with his wing mirror, to which you turn, give the finger and demand he does a U-turn and do it again…
Which is exactly what these four Venetians do, taking us into the light of the ‘Illuminant’ with its multiple layers of light and shade, before taking us deep into the shadow of the disconcerting title track,which twists and torments like a broiling sonic whirlpool, emphasizing how the band add and develop different dynamics in each and every aspect of what they do.
Intricate in its detail, and attention to same, and profound in its delivery, ‘Ombra’ is a revelatory and rewarding album, one comprised of multiple layers and mood which homogenize and intertwine with alacrity and laconic ease, luring you deeper and deeper into its shadows and rewarding you for taking the journey.
- ‘Ombra‘ is out now.
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