Monday, October 25, 2010

THE FORESHADOWING – Oionos CD review


THE FORESHADOWING – Oionos CD
Cyclone Empire Records

I thought this Italian band’s debut Days of Nothing from a few years ago was more “goth” then gothic doom. On this their sophomore effort they have embraced an approach more in line with ANATHEMA or MY DYING BRIDE with a different style vocals. Marco Benevento sings clean and yet very foreboding which fits well with the songs which are about war and its aftermath aka: loneliness, death and loss. Oionos is a perfect album for the excessively gloom. The opener “The Dawning” starts the theme off with some militarist cadence drumming and hits you with some serious riffs that forge images of a war torn battlefield. The title cut is fairly magnificent with it’s opening chugging riffs with some eerie sounding Hammond organ played in behind to set a gothic tone which doesn’t steer away from the doom. I also like how they took an instrumental interlude type of cut “Soliloquium” which ends with Gregorian chants and bleed it into “Lost Humanity” with its crisps riffs. “Chant of Widows” is probably the most upbeat and at times heavy cut on here which actually breaks out into a rhythmic pace. The latter part of the release gets deep into the gothic realm. There’s a STING cover of “Russians” which THE FORESHADOWING give the doom and gloom treatment to. I still hate STING. The final cut “Revelation 3-11” is an interesting keyboard driven instrumental which opens with the now famous speech by J. Robert Oppenheimer after the first atomic explosion. From there its pure melancholic guitar riffs ending with Oppenheimer’s words “Now I have become death the destroyer of worlds”. If these Italians planned on putting out the most miserable and depressed feeling release of the year I think they did it.

www.cyclone-empire.com/

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