m3u-playlist: http://tinyurl.com/o2zrj (all tracks!)
Review:
One story, fourteen chapters…
With his debut album Twisted Parameters, Maltese multi-talent Aldo Lombardi, made an impressive entry into the darker realms of the psytrance scene. That album still ranks very high in my personal chart of best artist albums of 2005 and I’m still amazed by its diversity, stamina and staying power. So naturally I’ve been eagerly awaiting the follow-up and the internet hype surrounding the album was also in a league not often seen with a ‘darkpsy’ album.
Aldo wanted to try something new this time, and for almost 20 years he had to idea to create an album that was much more a continuous story with chapters, as opposed to an album filled with individual tracks. The theme for this album, dubbed The Dark Journal, is the life and death of the notorious Vlad Dracula and his reign of terror in and around his native Romania in the fifteenth century. The booklet tells the true story of Dracula and each story represents a chapter in the story of his life – interpreted by Kemic-Al. I’m not gonna reproduce what people can read in the booklet, but I’ll try go express what I make of the individual chapters… They are meant to be digested as a whole, but to make it easier on the readers; I’ll use my usual track-by-track format. Let’s dig in!
Let me take you thru the tracks…
#01: Welcome To My Home…
With majestic orchestral pads of neo-classical music, Kemic-Al starts the first chapter of the story… Pounding drums, raven cries and eerie voice samples establish the atmosphere nicely. We’re definitely in the early fifteenth century now – and it’s a dark, troublesome age. An impressive intro of majestic proportions… Scary as ***, but frightening as it may be, it’s extremely compelling…
#02: The Hostage
After the lengthy intro the first proper beats are introduced amidst a ghostly, terrorizing reign of medieval horror. The church bells are shimmering and the harpsichord is playing a familiar, melancholy tune… Add some subtle, twirling acid-lines and some ancient choral work and you’re deep into this pounding track. There isn’t much progression going on, but do not despair, this is just one step of the way…
#03: Birth Of Justice – Part 1 (The Beginning)
As the story progresses, the intensity level is raised a few bars – we’re digging deeper into the dark realms now and the old acid-meter has been cranked up a few notches… There’s a slightly retarded melody going on here – it’s tweaked up and down – and eventually beyond recognition… It’s very emotional and in that regard it reminds me of some older The Muses Rapt stuff – it has the same melancholy touch – though obviously here, it’s confined in a much darker, more underground musical universe…
#04: Birth Of Justice – Part 2 (Rage Of Terror)
The second part of Birth Of Justice is more intense than the first one… All the energy conserved in the first part is reignited and reassembled as a fast-paced, maximal, propane-injected burst of energy… The acid is flowing freely and this is the most psychedelic moment thus far…
#05: Vlad Dracula (The Impaler)
Impaling is one of the most gruesome ways of execution, and I actually think that somehow Aldo has managed to channel some of that grotesqueness into this track… This is evil, perverse, dark-as-***, sick, haunting stuff… Just like the horrific image of Vlad The Impaler and his ghastly ways…
#06: Birth Of Justice – Part 3 (Reclaiming The Throne)
“I am Vlad Dracula. Son of the great prince Vlad. In the name of my father, I hereby reclaim the throne of Romania….” The last part of the threefold, and once again the energy level from the first two ones are surpassed here – and this is easily the most intense of the threefold… Syncopated acid-lines are morphing back and forth – spanning a wide spectre of sound… This is climactic, layered, persistent night music… The first part of this chapter is the best, and it seems like some of the focus and energy seems a little lost halfway thru… But after a couple of bland minutes during the middle passage, the track picks up again towards the end… Intensely frightening!
#07: Boyars Of Tirgoviste (The Revenge)
With the next chapter, the impressive orchestral pads are introduced once again – along with a bunch of silly (in a good way) samples of all kinds… We’re dining with the mad hatter and all his crazy guests – and in that sense, this track sends a friendly nod back to the first Kemic-Al album Twisted Parameters… After a bunch of very nocturnal tracks, a lighter, oddball track like this was needed to break the mould, clear the senses and reassure 100% focus… And oh my, is this track lovely… It’s very hectic and ever-changing… And I cannot even begin to count the layers here… Intense, multi-flavoured and immensely trippy stuff… Brilliant!
#08: Stakes
The next chapter has some of the same less-dark quality as its predecessor… This is still murky night trance, but not as über-dark as some of the previous stuff… It’s more like evil full-on and the acid-stabs and subtle bassline also indicates just that… Very danceable and very max-power like… And those howling wolves are placed *just* right…
#09: Accepted Darkness
“He has forsaken the truth and the light – and accepted the darkness!” This chapter starts with an AWESOME, totally unexpected climax already @ 0’37!! Wow, I love little surprises like that – totally goose-bump inducing stuff! Damn, now this is pure dancefloor fodder if there ever was dancefloor fodder… It’s fast-paced cyber trance like this, which shreds the mind, body and soul to pieces in a swift chainsaw movement… Brutal stuff – but oh my, there is beauty in brutality!
#10: Eternal Life
The brutality continues without hesitation in the next chapter… The church bells are still ringing, foreseeing the imminent doom that waits in the near future… The bass is pounding and the distant screams are haunting and remind us of Dracula’s horror… The chainsaw acid-lines from the previous chapter are still causing havoc and basically the senses are bombarded with all kinds of freaky sounds from the underworld…. The Gregorian chanting really tops it off, and this is truly a horrendous chapter… The final bridge part is maybe a tad monotonous, but it’s all part of Aldo’s master plan…
#11: Buried Alive
Imagine the claustrophobic, life-fading experience of being buried alive. Frightening, horrifying and devastating – just what Dracula went thru when he was sentenced by the Catholics… This chapter does its best to portray the soundtrack of the loneliest place in existence – Dracula’s tomb! Again the acid has taken control of the main sound picture – and this chapter revolves around some hi-pitched, twirling acid-bits accompanied by some nocturnal, doomsday rhythms…
#12: End Of Journey
With marching rhythms marking the final retreat of Dracula, this short chapter marks the beginning of the end… It’s a breath of fresh, unpolluted air and it’s another gigantic, orchestral sound collage of epic proportions… It’s beautiful!
#13: Forest Of The Impaled
This chapter is perhaps the most graphic of them all – the title refers to Dracula’s favourite way of executing his enemies: He impaled them on stakes! When the Turks marched into Tirgoviste, they were met by 20.000 stinking corpses impaled on stakes… This chapter describes in sound the horrors of that experience – in one acid-ridden, synth-riddled piece of night trance… Maximal power in this piece of terrifying history…
#14: The Last Battle With The Ottoman
With the final chapter and the last battle the story draws to a close, and if you were imagining a chilled, relaxed final track; well think again! This is upbeat, experimental, in-your-face hyper trance… Riddled with acid, strange FX, digital farts and electronic burps… Very Penta-like actually, but still unmistakably Kemic-Al in all his relentless glory! Phew! The final couple of minutes are dedicated to a sort of outro and it’s time to sit back, catch your breath and think about what you’ve just experienced… Like walking out of the movies and just slowly trying to absorb what you’ve just witnessed… Phew, what a rush! What a trip!
Setting out to create a themed concept album with basically one album-long track, could easily have ended in pompous, pretentious, introvert garbage… But this is VERY far from that, this is actually a very, very special album. Very interesting, and refreshingly different! Anyone expecting Twisted Parameters Pt. 2 will be disappointed though. This album is much more mature – and in the same regard, it’s less easily accessible. Some of the tracks are indeed introvert and with the continued story concept, it’s not like you wanna skip tracks and enjoy them individually… This works MUCH better as one long story track. With that in mind, allow me to compare this with similar concept albums released in recent years. It’s not as amazing as Artifakt’s ground-breaking and diverse Artifakts II (Timecode 2005) but it’s even better than Megalopsy’s The Abstract Machine (Trishula 2005). But were milestone albums in their own right, and The Dark Journal finds it place steadily between them.
Musically this album doesn’t sway far away from the so-called darkpsy genre. The BPM is kept at a steady 148 throughout the album, but Kemic-Al still manages to keep the vast majority of the tracks interesting with all kinds of tweaks, twists and turns. Yes, there are a couple of dull moments, but they are scarce and as they are an integral part of the story they don’t bother me as much as they would on, say a compilation. Aldo also made the artwork and the impressive, informative booklet himself – as well as all the music + mastering and so on. How’s that for multi-talent folks? Very well done Aldo, you’ll have a hard time topping this album!
All in all, this album is a gem within the darker realms of psytrance. But, it’s not as easily accessible as most albums. It requires the listener to listen to all of it at once, and as a minimum a couple of repeated listens. Fans of melodic full-on and other purists will take a bit of convincing before they get this. But invest some time in this, and the reward will come back to you tenfold… This album is brilliant! …Enjoy!
Favourites: This is supposed to be enjoyed as a whole – like one long track. Chapters 1, 4, 7(!), 9(!) and 12 are particularly well-executed though…
DeathPosture
