Review Summary: When a band can combine dynamics from such a huge range of styles and not only make it cohesive, but attractive as a first listen and deep enough for successive spins, they need to be applauded
Count me in as another person taken in by this debut by Italian somethingcore band
Amia Venera Landscape.
As a starting point, take your chiming and rugged post hardcore riffs and sensibilities from
Underoath and
Alexisonfire and put them in a progressive song structure that bands like
Isis and
Neurosis favor. That's the basic gist of what you're getting here, and I'd be doing the band a disservice to just let this sleeping dog lie with so little of a warning to potential encroachers.
"Glances (Part II)" is a great launching point for your listening pleasure, easily searchable on YouTube (With the name just being "Glances"), and while it doesn't embody every bit of
The Long Procession, it has more than enough material to show you what's up. The riffs on display on "Glances" (And the album as a whole) are angular and violent, true to form manifestations of a band who knows just what the *** they're after. As jagged as the music can be, powerful crescendos and drops give the album a sense of epic proportions that will reek of a big budget Hollywood action climax, leaving you breathless during the ambient and shoegaze drone pieces skillfully placed as buffers.
Not sacrificing merit for easy listening, the clean vocals accentuate the sense of dread and isolation, as well as give an interesting trade-off to the violent screams which, in comparison, are a bit pedestrian. Comparisons will immediately come to mind of
Alexisonfire... but being compared to Dallas is hardly an insult. They are executed beautifully, especially in the lively, sprawling epic "Nicholas", one of the (if not the) strongest songs to be found here
Individual instrument performances here are worth noting all across the board, most notably the drumming (Echoes of a Ken Schalk from the now defunct
Candiria), but the most notable performance here is the most important: The songwriting is damn near flawless, executed like a band who has been on the scene for years. The catch here is that, for all intents and purposes,
this is the bands debut album. With all of the subtle touches, charged riffs, and delicate ambiance, it's hard to imagine them being able to top their first effort. I was wrong about
Burst, so only time will tell if I'm wrong about
Amia Venera Landscape.
When a band can combine dynamics from such a huge range of styles and not only make it cohesive, but attractive as a first listen and deep enough for successive spins, they need to be applauded.
The Long Procession has a few dragging points, and a few times the mathcore sections seem a bit off-kilter and forced, but as an overall package I haven't heard something this raw, fresh, and rock-solid in it's fundamentals in quite some time. Absolutely recommended.
