For lack of any other convenient tag, Italians Viscera are often placed on a post-metal category, yet their sound incorporates far more styles and moods than the standard Neurosis/Isis hybrid.Indeed, the band’s second album “2: As Zeitgeist Becomes Profusion of the I” displays a wide array of influences raging from shoegazing to black-metal, all cleverly merged together into something singular and unified, without ever sounding disjointed or forced.
Just try to imagine Jesu’s Justin Broadrick playing with someone like Deathspell Omega and you’re half-way close to figuring them out. Subtle melodious and hypnotic passages are interspersed with abrupt and harsher moments complemented with a pleasant dichotomy between soft and lulling vocal harmonies and gnashing screams. A song like “Hands in Gold” better reflects their drive to balance the song-writing between harsh and soft moments, beauty and angst gentle. It begins with a gentle, mellow and hypnotic guitar chords before transforming into a transforming into a fraught and frenetic black-metal outburst.
Although “2: As Zeitgeist Becomes Profusion of the I” is not a wholly spectacular or groundbreaking record, it’s nonetheless a pleasant and interesting journey through their own world, and form my opinion it’s very much worth joining them. (7.5/10)
Luca Niero
Band info: www.myspace.com/detestatio
Label info: www.consouling.be
For fans of: Jesu, Old Man Gloom, Agalloch, Deathspell Omega
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