Tale Of A Dark Fate is the second album by Florentine band L’Albero del Veleno and confirms all the good qualities of its predecessor from 2013, Le radici del male. It was self-released in 2017 and was distributed by Black Widow Records. The recording sessions were carried out by a slightly renewed line up featuring Nadin Petricelli (keyboards, synth), Claudio Miniati (drums), Lorenzo Picchi (guitars), Michele Andreuccetti (bass) and Marco Brenzini (flute) plus the help of the guests Jacopo Ciani (violin, viola, strings) and Cesare Valentini (choir arrangement). The result of their long, painstaking work is an instrumental album conceived as an opera in two acts inspired by the legend of the venomous tree from which the band took its name. The storyline is simple: a man falls asleep under the tree to never wake up again. Although there are no lyrics nor specific liner notes, the art cover and the drawings you can find in the booklet by Stefano Matteoli give a clue about what the music is about...
The first part of the album, “Act I – Hypnos”, is divided into six parts. It starts with the short “Prelude - The poison tree”, where a nice piano pattern is backed by a threatening rhythm section. In the booklet the image associated with this piece portrays a tree resembling to a Medusa head, with poisonous snakes as branches... It fades out in the first part of Act I, entitled “Morpheus” after the Greek god of dreams, son of Hypnos, god of sleep. Here the influence of Goblin is apparent from the very first bass lines that paint the musical canvas with strong deep red brush strokes...
The music goes on with the dark, threatening atmosphere of “Phobetor”, the personification of nightmares that appeared in dreams in the form of animals or monsters and resided in a part of the underworld. Then the tension eases for a while during the short “Interlude I - Momus” where comes in the personification of satire and mockery. This little scherzo or trick of destiny leads to the disquieting “Phantasos”, named after the God of surreal dreams where, quoting Alexandre Dumas, the breath of death reacts violently against life and darkness kills the light.
The track entitled “Interval” is nothing but fifteen seconds of silence, just a little pause before “Act II – Thanatos”, that is divided into five parts and describes the passage from sleep to death. The first section is entitled “Clotho”, after the goddess responsible for spinning the thread of human life. The music has a solemn pace, an obscure mood and every now and again could conjure up strange phenomena...
Next comes the nervous section entitled “Lachesis” and related to the goddess measurer of each thread of life. Here, after a nervous start the rhythm calms down as to indicate the acceptance of fate. Then it’s the turn of the ethereal “Interlude II – Ananke” where we meet the personification of inevitability, compulsion and necessity, the mother of the Fates and the only one to have control over their decisions...
The following section is entitled “Atropos” after the goddess who chose the mechanism of death and ended the life of mortals by cutting their thread. The Grim Reaper enters the scene wielding her scythe with a surge of energy underlined by fiery organ waves and raging flute notes, then boldly marches towards the unknown... The final section is entitled “Postlude – Moros”, after the god of impending doom, the one who drives mortals to their deadly fate. This delicate and evocative part with piano and violin in the forefront is a kind of elegy of intense beauty that ends the album with a nocturnal atmosphere and a sense of infinite peace...
On the whole, a very mature work where the band showcase great compositional skills and musicianship mixing classical music and rock with extraordinary freshness and gusto.
You can listen to the complete album HERE
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