This curious Italian project uses only guitars, bass, vocals, and some keyboards to create lush, calm compositions that have an ethereal sort of somber atmosphere happening. The opening track is a weird mishmash of reverberated leads over clean chords with very softly delivered vocals, whereas "Sunrise" is similar but keyboards are the most prominent instrument, and some quiet female vocals harmonize with the male singing - setting the tone for the rest of the demo. They write some excellent melodies, and I prefer the keyboards when they use piano textures, though strangely none of these aspects are often the basis around which the songs are constructed. The biggest problem here is the recording, suffering from a very quiet mix where it's not easy to make out all of the details. The guitar tone on the leads is a little rough and needs to be smoother to really let the sustain ring through, but a cleaner recording with a more detail oriented, bright mix that would give everything its own space and density is what's really necessary. The vocals are very muffled, and that carries over to everything else so a lot of the really important melodic aspects get suffocated in the midst of it all. The CD-R comes in a shoddy xerox sleeve that has some slightly pixilated artwork (a typical photo of a barren tree) and text that really doesn't have much of a visual appeal at all. No lyrics are included, so... I would very much like to hear more from this act under the proper circumstances. This is a poorly presented demo (visually) that does get my attention, but doesn't really represent the band's music in a manner that feels developed enough to get an idea of what their true capabilities are.
[self-released]
Running time - 20:26, Tracks: 5
[Notable tracks: Sunrise, Grateful Time]
...The Sun of Weakness - [email protected]
