2006-06-06
Divine lust is a Portuguese band comprised of Filipe Goncalves on vocals and guitar, Joao Costa the drummer, Antonio Capote, the keyboard player, and Jorge Fonte, the bass player, who left the band recently (the band is renowned for swapping members).
Now, I don't know about you, but when I think of Portugal, I'm not thinking metal right away, and frankly, you can count the number of famous metal bands that came out from Portugal on one hand. Nevertheless, Divine Lust is trying to break out, and in my opinion, the band are on their way, because they're evolving nicely.
“Harvest 2004” is an EP that consists of four songs, and it's coming out two years after their debut album, which received great reviews throughout Europe. The band, which was formed in 1998, plays a combination of Heavy Metal and Gothic Doom Metal, and because of that what we hear in this EP is a mixture of melodic tunes that go pretty slow, clean vocals that make way to Death-like vocals now and then and a melancholic atmosphere in general.
The opening song is “Hunting”, and it displays that mixture perfectly. The length of the song is not typical to a Doom Metal song, just under four minutes, but its style is definitely Gothic-Doom. The next song, “Devilish Deliverance”, is more appropriate, length wise, to be a Doom Metal song. This six and a half minute song starts off with a melodic intro that lasts a whole minute, and then comes Filipe with his gloomy voice. The song continues this way for a few minutes, and then, suddenly, it goes faster, the music is no longer slow and dark and the vocals are no longer clean. The shrieking Death vocals last only a minute, and then it's back to the clean but dark vocals, although the music stays a lot faster than at the beginning. The song ends with some nice piano tunes, and then it's on the next song, “Duskful Of Bliss, Morningful Of Misery”, which is the longest here in this EP, nine and a half minutes. The song has a Heavy Metal opening combined with Filipe's melancholic voice. A few minutes later the guest violinist, Tiago Flores from Corvos, joins the fray, and then the song slows down to a halt. You only hear whispers accompanied by the knocks on the snare, some tunes in the background and a lot of bass. A few moments later the piano brings us slowly back to a solid rhythm, and then Filipe joins in, singing softly with the help of his friends that play acoustic tunes. This all ends when Filipe says the second part of the song's name, “Morningful Of Misery”. At that point the metal returns till the end of the song.
The last song on this EP is a cover version of Duran Duran's hit, “Save A Prayer”. In my opinion, this cover is excellent, because of Filipe's heavy voice, the Heavy Metal tunes, the slamming double bass on display by Joao Costa in the chorus and Antonio Capote's keyboards, which at some point reminds us of another song by Duran Duran, “Ordinary World”.
Nir Haviv
