Since the publication of the grammatical faux pas debut Melancholy of the Engels two years ago, Raffaele Galasso established more playgrounds, but the time is now ripe for the second, decidedly ambitious one Shmael-Replenish work: Clear the stage for The Sound of a Thousand Orchestras – Part I.
However, this time the Italian needs a lot of time to get on track: the eleven-minute opener Greve-Elevation acts for a long time like a kid in a candy store completely overwhelmed by the possibilities, can’t adjust any focus and shows an annoying volatility.
Shmael gets lost in a kaleidoscope-like clusterfuck of randomly changing scenes, which are also in extreme stylistic contrast to each other – a rolling heaviness with goth synths and symphonic tendencies revises in one scene to deathdoomy blastbeats and then immediately whispers guttural, pushes once more and once more one Opeth‘esque folk-acoustic or strums with grandeur on the piano, oscillates arbitrarily between gentle contemplation, flattening morass-heaviness and short fragments of frenzied chase. It all remains a mess of disoriented patchwork, torn and frustrating. (Admittedly also because each passage of this condensed suite would have liked more room to unfold).
The Sound of a Thousand Orchestras – Part I In any case, practically sabotages itself in this first phase, but doesn’t deliberately let the songwriting thrive less because it’s so part of the concept shouldbut felt more because Shmael it does not want to succeed more conclusively: Here the album simply fails due to its prog ambitions.
In this respect, it is an immense relief when the Italian still finds its way and thus paves the way for the project’s traditional Funeral Doom.
Bathing there Ricordo-I Prize The Memory then with sacral receptions sacral (and ends almost too abruptly), maintains the meandering interludeHymn To Beauty an idiosyncratic charisma with a dreamy, fairytale patina Salice-Correspondences with memories of wind music from the past century in ghostly tendencies of melancholy before Santa Vergogna-Hymn To Beauty with eclectic-tectonic dynamics uses the fact that the songwriting is carried by a feeling for idiosyncratic aesthetics and a mystical atmosphere. Ultimately acts The Sound of a Thousand Orchestras – Part I following a difficult start, it’s still largely above the genre average.
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