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Right
now, my wife has turned on the telly and they’re showing a reprise of
the 2006 Eurovision Contest. Lordi are waving the flag of cock rock and
bad taste with their not-so-great winner tune “Hard Rock Hallelujah”.
And again this makes me think that there’s so much classy and original
music out there in the metal ranks and why, oh, why does it have to be
something like the Finnish clowns that represent rock music when we
finally make a real entry on people’s TV screens across
Europe
?
Take
someone like Rome’s doom metallians Novembre. Now a band like that made and entry that
would make a difference.
A
quick shift through my CD collection told me that the last time I
checked out Novembre was in 1999 when they released “Classica”.
Truth be told, the effort was not one that stayed clear in your memory
for long, however solid it was. “Materia” is definitely more
memorable. Gone are the growling vocals of the past (excluding a passage
in the song “Aquamarine”) and instead Novembre has moved along the
lines of Katatonia with a more mellow and controlled style that suits
them a lot.
“Materia”
reminds me quite a bit of Katatonia’s “The Great Cold Distance”
with it’s repressed and melancholy power, but if nothing else, then
Romans separate themselves from the Swedes by singing mostly in Italian.
In places the use of this beautiful language just adds an extra
dimension to the album.
As
albums go, “Materia” is a full and rounded effort that can only open
doors for Novembre – although probably not in the Eurovision sense…
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