2004-04-07
Klimt 1918 is one of the most pleasurable albums I have heard in recent time, d on the other side, its one of the weirdest.
The band uses several genres, including doom oriented melodic aspects, combined them with a more avant-garde feel and created something new and interesting, this is no easy listening, but the album is highly recommended to those with a more open mind.
Its hard to find any comparisons, because let’s face it, nothing relay sounds like them, one possible comparison is the latter material by Anathema, the vocalist’s voice is not as unique, but he also sings his vocals in a straight forwarded manner, with no extra coloring added to it.
The music is an interesting mix of clean and distorted guitars, resounding drumming, and rock like rhythms, the band stays at a regular mid-tempo level, never going into any surprising blast beats or overly doomish rhythms.
The main problem with classifying the band is trying to label them as a melodic doom band, because they carry far too many rock elements, the distortions however, persist the doom connections, they also contain some nu metal influences, but the melodic aspect is far to obvious to label them as such, as well.
The band’s cover and logo come straight from the avant-garde side of music, which is quite misleading since they do not contain too many avant-garde aspects, a few, but the melodic and metallic sides separate them from most avant-garde inclined bands.
I shall try to stop classifying them and simply say this is an excellent album, well produced, the vocalist, unlike many other Italian vocalists, is not handicapped by his accent, yet his lyrics do not come off as especially clear, working on his diction may contribute the band, another point they might work at, is adding some more diversity, while the clean/distortion formula works well, it does tend to cause some boredom at times.
Stand out tracks are We Don’t Need No Music and That Girl, both catchier, and thus more accessible tracks.
To summarize, klimt 1918 us quite a gem, not for all tastes, but a listener with an open mind and a tendency to depressive melodies shall find much to enjoy here.
Alon Miasnikov
