Medical Miracles

After the pleasantly surprising debut demo one had real expectations on this band. Put this way, this second demo does not deliver at all. The intro track even anti-delivers. Some decent piano tones go over into a horrible, animated radio play sort of dialogue. Now I am not a fan of spoken intros in general and when the pronunciation is so grotesquely off (we’re talking Italian power metal class but totally lacking any entertainment value) I become a militant adversary.

Then the band I got to learn from their first demo comes out in the spotlight. At first glance it’s generally the same style, the same level of heaviness and the dispirited singer are still there. Though time has not stopped. It’s faster and more riffy than before, thus weakening the Candlemass connections, removing the “doom breakdowns” and getting rid of the structural integrity which made the last demo a real piece of art.

What we have here is in deed much closer to disheartened half-gothic metal than the sound they were doing so well before. Not only did they stop doing what I really liked – they also do the new stuff a bit disappointing. Too many points are points of zero velocity, i.e. the rest of the body awkwardly revolves around the point which during a period of time means that nothing happens. And then a riff reminiscent of the good old days of 2004 appears only to immediately disappear and leave me even more disillusioned and bitter. At least that shows that they haven’t lost it, just left it to see if the grass really is greener on the new side.

They still have an unusual style and I don’t hold a future return to form as impossible but whatever ‘Medical Miracles’ do well, ‘Exploitation of Human Disturbance’ did better (and with a longer title).