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“Year of the Hunger” encompasses elements from a wide range of genres: Death Metal grunts and blastbeats, Prog Metal song dynamics and vintage Blues Rock vibes…..to name a few. However the essence and sound production seem to place the album within the Hard Rock category.

 

This ambiguity stems from The Moor’s philosophy to refute the restrictions entailed with categorisation. And that is an approach which I wholeheartedly endorse. At times, though, this same attitude makes the album feel ‘slippery’…..in other words as a listener you sometimes struggle to grasp onto the music properly. Whether that is a virtue or a drawback is subjective, I suppose.

 

What is not in doubt, however, is the level of musicianship of this Italian quartet, even though they don’t always seem interested in flaunting their prowess. Take ‘Covered’ for instance: the songs contains some brilliantly Thrashy riffs interspersed with some catchy vocal melodies – and it all sounds so deceptively straightforward. The (instrumental) title-track is somewhat more atmospheric with some excellent interplay between guitar arpeggios and riffs, courtesy of Enrico Longhin and Davide Carraro. Since I’m heaping praise on the album I cannot omit to mention ‘Venice’ which contains some guest female vocals – I particularly liked the piano sounds and the song’s magical outro. The Moor also throw in an instrumental version of this song, which I must say sounds really great too.

 

So there’s a lot of stuff to uncover at every new listen and fans of bands such as The Flower Kings and Opeth might take particular joy in doing that. There is, however, one main thing that failed to strike a chord with me and that’s the ‘clean’ vocals. Not that Enrico (yes, he also supplies lead vocals) has a bad voice but there were several times that the songs cried out for a more powerful Metal-sounding voice.

 

Ultimately “Year of the Hunger” is an excellent debut that, quite remarkably, manages to inject fresh ideas into the Prog Rock landscape.

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