Drastique
Pleasureligion
3.6
Formerly known as Drastic, this Italian Gothic/Black band got my attention with the Rubenesque model on the cover, but soon lost my attention when the music started. You will hear the female vocals, growled male vocals, and keyboard heavy, heaving song structures with obvious comparisons to Thalarion, Tristania and Agathodaimon with a splash of Cradle of Filth. Of course being a Gothic black metal album, the album is concept based, but you’d never tell from the structure and pacing of the album that a story is being told.
What really hurt this album is the quirky shifts in styles and the programmed drums, which is a shame as the guitars are pretty solid and driving. Female crooner Fay often delivers her lines with quasi-spoken antagonistic tone, that sounds like she’s having PMS, rather than evocative and ethereal. The album's mechanical, robotic production renders the powerful guitars as disembodied from the rest of the material. The keyboards are all over the place ranging from expected black metal symphonic (“Senses”) to cyber/techno stylings (“Perfect Nothing”). The resultant hodge-podge of sound just jitters and stutters through varying ranges of speeds and moods-none of which are very well rendered. The artistic romanticism of Gothic metal is never fully realized, as the beauty and the beast atmosphere normally required in the genre comes across more like a fractured musical jigsaw puzzle consisting of three separate puzzles with pieces forced into the wrong holes. The whole thing is incredibly disjointed and fragmented rather than flowing and beautiful.
Peeling back the extraneous Goth elements ripe with almost comedic overtones , you might find some acceptable riffs that at least have some thick if robotic weight, the intro riff of “Maria Magdelena” has promise before it drifts into the abyss of dance-tastic peppiness. Album closer “Voyage Dans la Femme”, again has some decent riffing and might be the album's most acceptable cut, mainly ‘cos it stays moderately singularly paced rather than hopping around like a juiced up meth head with a drum machine. When it does shift styles at its midpoint, it’s less sudden and well drastic, instead more fluid and natural. Even attempts at slower moody doomy tunes like interesting the native tongue that introduces “Immortal Beloved” get ruined by the rigid drums and Drastique’s infatuation with off the wall time changes and irregular song patterns. Even die hard Gothic metal fans will be grating their teeth at the band's complete lack of consistency.
There are so many more choices (Epica, Sacriversum, and After Forever for example) in the genre that deliver a far more pleasing sound than Drastique that is makes this album hard to recommend to many folks, I mean if Nuclear Blast/Century Media won't even sign them, they must be bad. Just avoid this folks.
Non molto buono a tutto.
