With the album title in front of me I expected Demetra Sine Die to be one of those gazing bands, all nice harmonies and looking out over a shimmering plateau of ice. Yeah I suppose there’s a little bit of that from these Italians who are here delivering their third album but they are a challenge far more worthy of deeper investigation than that and a difficult band to categorise and put in a compartment. We like a challenge though, it’s far better than a band neatly fitting into a genre and playing something like thrash by numbers and this journey has been most welcome as is anything remotely glacial in this damn heat.
I noticed that the first track was named after philosopher, physician and Sci-Fi writer Stanislaw Lem and indeed you can probably tie everything here title wise together to give some sort of conceptual narrative about just where the band are coming from. Rather than getting tied up in all that, although I’m sure it’s fascinating, it’s a case of travelling into the music itself and falling into the nice throbbing bass and bouncy drum-work of the track itself. This has a Kraut rock feel from the off and like its subject the song seems highly intelligent taking in a bit of everything including, doom, psyche, sludge, post and as the clean vocals rise and roar even stadium rock. The singer has a belting voice at full stretch and the fuzzy lines work well as I kind of find myself straddling the past with bands as diverse as Loop, Levitation and Thee Hypnotics as much as anything more contemporary. I’m hooked by ‘Birds Are Falling’ and I am reminded slightly of a heavy bastard version of Stones classic 2000 Light Years From Home and also a bit of Pink Floyd’s Astronomy Domine by both melody and vocal patterns lurking within. How odd this has taken me right back to 60’s man! That’s not all either as skip forward a bit and ‘Eternal Transmigration’ invokes its pure Morcockian Hawkwind which has me wondering if I have dropped some brown acid and tumbled through a time warp. Deep breath, do not panic!
This is one of those albums everyone is going to find or lose their own head listening to and pick influences whilst they explore it. Is that a bit Sonic Youthy as far as ‘Lament’ is concerned for instance or is it more Oranssi Pazuzu? Seriously there are all sorts of things going on here. Another point and perhaps being sent an actual CD here helps but boy does the production here sound absolutely fantastic on a decent stereo system. When things do get a bit on the shimmery side as they do on ‘Gravity’ before it descents into a hoary sludgy morass I am reminded a little of Barst, another band that impressed no end recently so it is all very much a synthesis of sounds across the decades as far as I am concerned here.
By the time we arrive at the closing title track I am both chilled and invigorated, there has been lots to take in and this has demanded a lot of plays to get close to formulating a review. It’s an adventurous album full of surprises along the way and for that it is both commendable and well worth seeking out.
(8/10 Pete Woods)
Leave a Reply