De Rerum Natura

This is the first album from Sokrovenno, an Italian band playing melodic black metal.

The production on this album is quite clean. The rhythm guitars are tuned high, with just a bit of distortion, the drums are crisp, and the snarled vocals are right up front in the mix. The ringing lead guitars and audible, pleasant bass tone are especially noteworthy.

Sokrovenno's songwriting is relentlessly, almost aggressively melodic. The rhythm guitar and vocals remind me of bands like (early) Manes and Ulver, but the lead melodies and bass lines are spacious and light, even openly beautiful at times. The nimble, varied drumming on display here only adds to the effect, particularly during long instrumental passages like the middle of "Flammantia Moenia Mundi". The band's liberal use of mid-tempo pacing and acoustic guitar bring the atmosphere to the forefront, but the raw guitar and vocals lend these songs a rich amount of tension and contradiction. The tremolo riffing and echoing solos on "Fragore" are convincingly fierce, and recall Burzum at its best; the shifting guitar lines on "Sulla Mortalità Dell'Anima" are equally masterful. I especially enjoyed the blatant melodicism of the last six minutes of the album, during "Vestigia Pressa Bisulcis"/"In Ricordo" -- the emotion and conviction on display here is humbling!

De Rerum Natura is based upon Lucretius' naturalistic rejection of religion and determinism, and while I can't understand the Italian lyrics, the album does have a convincingly Classic feel. There's no shame or hesitation here; Sokrovenno never surrender to post-modern cynicism or the self-absorption of modernism, nor to conventional ideas about what black metal should sound like. The result is a unique and moving record, one which stands apart from the herd. Recommended.

Standout tracks: "Flammantia Moenia Mundi", "Fragore", "Vestigia Pressa Bisulcis"

Review by vorfeed: http://www.vorfeed.net