Liste des groupes Metal Gothique Inner Shrine Mediceo

I was very excited about getting this album after owning their previous CD. The packaging is amazing, and the art work depicts 16th century Italian portraits and renaissance illustrations. The band themselves dress in long gowns and Venetian carnival masks, so straight away I thought this was going to be a band with a difference, and I was sort of right, well 60% right at least.

What we have is soft gothic metal with operatic female vocals all the way through with the occasional male narration. There’s no blast beats or snarling vocals, just midpaced operatic metal. That sounds quite average on paper but they’re certainly not short of fresh ideas and sounds. What you also get is Gregorian chant, medieval festival music, and some excellent instrumentals. Sadly and frustratingly though, this band can fall into sounding like a cheap Nightwish or Macbeth on some tracks, which isn’t helped by the production which leaves the metal a little low in the mix and come across as quite average like a lot of other female fronted gothic metal bands.

But when they do let their creative juices flow they can be epic and beautiful, and haunting, like the final track Odissea which is sound track quality. It’s a slow, dark, epic, ghostly operatic track, and certainly does testament to their image and artwork. For some reason the vocals in the last track seem to be more balanced in the music than previous tracks where they can seem a bit too dominant. Unfortunately Odissea leaves you frustrated wishing all the tracks were this grand and epic.

Over all a great album, and worth buying even if it’s just for the A5 digi book and artwork, but even though they can occasionally and annoyingly fall into the realms of average, with repeated listening it does grow on you, and it’s a good length album too. It’s not too long, and not too short. Let's hope their next album is as awesome as Odissea all the way through