Six years after its debut album "Reflejos del Sol" released by Divine Comedy, Der Arbeiter is back with a new album inspired and dedicated to the Cilean writer Miguel Serrano. HOZWEGE contains ten songs in balance from neo-folk with Mediterranean influences (check the melodies used for the acoustic guitar parts) and electronic arrangements. This musical blend along with the melancholic atmospheres create a cinematic effect where light industrial ambient martialism influences meet electronic folk and acoustic passionate instrumentals. Along with nine original songs, you'll find "Wo Die Wilden Kerle Wohnen ", originally wrote by Gerhard Hallstatt (of Allerseelen) for the same title 7" compilation ("Where The Brutes Dwell" is an ancient Germanic fairy tale and on that 7" different bands recorded their musical version of it). Love and despair find a new meaning following the Serrano's concept of "Minne" ("a love at once illicit and morally elevating, passionate and disciplined, humiliating and exalting, human and transcendent") and Der Arbeiter made of its music the carrier of these emotions.

A lot of Ataraxia's fans have been worried about their prolonged silence, being their last studio-album, Kremasta Nera issued in 2007, even if they proposed some new tracks, partially included in their brand new release have already been performed on the occasion of some live concerts, but after the issue of a precious collection, Oil In Canvas, including an elegant photographic book, this long wait could be said finished as well as totally paid by a very good release, the 23th added to their rich discography. Their sound has turned into something totally different from stylistic gardens full of dark roses' bunches, planted in relatively recent releases such as Paris Spleen, so that I'm glad to ascertain they've not make the usual mistake, i.e. a certain stylistic repetitiveness, bands with a distinctively recognizable sound like Ataraxia's one normally make as well as I'm glad to notice they've not be submitted to minimalist flatteries! In Llyr, the Gaelic name of the notorious instrument used by bards and Greek lyrical poets whose shape seems to have been inspired by the arch drawn by swans' neck, the darkest side of the band has been mitigated by their renowned interest in shamanism and therapy music, being both elements blown into the record through the narrative trick of telling the story partially inspired by Celtic traditions, pagan myths and feminine celebrations of Nature, whose main character is Siqillat, a fictitious Persian healer travelling across different ages and places while changing his semblances and even their sound appears more luminous and 'narrative' than previous acts as well as enriched by Celtic elements. As usual, their way of composing and performing is just apparently plain as if the listener dwells upon the rich complexity of instrumental (you could recognise 12 guitars, sitar, gamelan, flutes, keyboards, bells, santoor, tablas, boghdan and many other percussions, whose important role in the line-up together with the astonishingly wide-ranged voice by Francesca Nicoli is probably one of the most prominent property of Ataraxia's textures ), he/she could easily understand and appreciate its stature.

There're some tracks such as the title-track and the initial Siqillat where the band seems to brush their 'trademark' sound up, but I personally prefer tracks such the dark-tinged (maybe the darkest parenthesis) Quintaluna or Payatry Mantra where the energy and the impressive vocal extensions ' even in the most 'static' performances she's able to confer an ethereal sense of movement to the composition throughout a wise use of staccato bowing'¦) by Francesca are so evident than someone (including myself) could think other female vocalists took part to the recording sessions! Other evocative sublime peaks have been reached by the very long suite entitled Evnyssien, whose vibrant alchemy is based on appreciable arpeggios by Vandelli and enriched by dreamy and delicate flute inserts as well as by the entrancing closing track, Borrea, another interesting example of the perfect balance between the ethereal smokes coming from the musical pot of Vandelli, Pagliari and the percussionist Spaggiari (recently joined to the band) and the sublime voice by Francesca. Llyr is definitively both close to the enlightened and close to perfection!

Three years from the previous "Transient messages" album, Phenotract is back with a new one titled SHIFTING. The new CD brings us ten new songs that dismiss the dance influences to embrace a blend of electronic, new wave and pop music with ethereal atmospheres. The thing that is popping up immediately on SHIFTING are the upfront vocals and the reverb layer that seems to permeate the whole sound. The whole album sounds more intimate but there are also upbeat songs like "Separate places" or "Full circle again" to spice up the atmosphere. Helped by Katharine Heller, Niabi Caldwell, Anaben (from the band By Night With Spear) on vocals and by guitarist Gabriel Dorosz, Eric duets with his guests giving to the whole album a touch of dreamy synthpop where the ambience shift from dark to melancholic. At the moment I think to prefer their old style but if you like intimate electronic wave mid tempos with personal lyrics check SHIFTING. On the band's website you can listen to each track.

Reactive Black is a duo from Hamburg with the intention to describe musically the self-destroying tendencies of mankind and the darkness of exsistence. The members are Sassy Skeleton (it's not a joke) and Rotten (Ok...) and they play a melodic rock gothiced by the jarboesque voice of Sassy. She sings... or maybe talk the lyrics under some riffs and synths. It's hard rock, well played and produced and, when the voice is filtered, it work well. By the way, they have few ideas to escape the high wall of a too used musical form and stereotyped attitude.
This album has, at least, a wonderful track "Fading away" where the spoken word under a downtempo beat and athmospheric synth create an atmosphere of real decadence but the rest of the album is boring.

Chaos Magick-soaked as well as partially inspired by visionary writings of authors such as H.P.Lovecraft and some alchemistic and Gnostic issues and musically by the genuinely epic side of goth-rock, The Eternal Arcane, the second part of a tetralogy started with their previous release Into The Arms Of Chaos and already faced by bands like McCoy's Fields Of The Nephilim in Elizium or The Sisters Of Mercy in Floodland , is the new conceptual-tinged album by the appreciated Austrian band Whispers In The Shadow. I admit I had to examine the matter closely by collecting background information about CMT paradigm, octarine magic, the psychohistoric mechanism of the Aeons (according to some chaoists, we're experiencing a transitional phase completing the so-called Pandaemon age, characterized by a decline of what they call the materialist paradigm, a peak of the magical one and a resurgence of the transcendental paradigm, inspiring monotheistic religions and even their apparent antithesis such as freemasonry or satanic cults'¦maybe the track From Aeon To Aeon is partially inspired by these beliefs), Pratchett's hypothesis , angelic hierarchies (in If Uriel falls, Ashley Daynour mentions this Archangel in its lyrics ' 'What if Uriel falls? / And time stops forever/ What if Rome burns again? / And all the angels sing together / This song' -, governing Aquarius constellation, which is going to influence mankind's future according to a plenty of new age theories) and other similar stuff. I don't want to pass myself off as an occultist or a sorcerer, but I argue a smattering of these subjects could be useful to better appreciate WITS' musical language and its intrinsic positivity'¦it could sound quite strange for a gothic release, but it's just a silly commonplace the consideration that such a work could spread bad meanings and it definitively doesn't have nothing to share with nihilist meme akin to most metal bands even from the stylistic viewpoint, as some standards of the so-called new metal caress a few tracks of this work-out mainly the most industrial-rock tinged tracks such as Blood, sweat and tears, maybe the only authentic metal 'barracking' contained in The Eternal Arcane, slightly sharpened by nice guitar divertssment and a funny glowing synth sound.

I prefer by far the ruthenic new wave-stained style expressed in tracks such as Amenta Descending or God Of Confusion (those IO IO IO IAO you're going to listen is not a cat's caterwauling, but it could refer to some rituals of the chaos magic according to which the sound of vowels could help in channeling some energies in the body of practitioner'¦for instance an high-pitched I sound inherit with the visualization of energy in the head area'¦) as well as the solid rock riffs of The Wheel Of Pain and the enchanting epic gears of the title-track, containing a quotation from Algernon Blackwood's 'The man whom trees loved' (whose plot speaks about a woman unable to avoid his beloved husband the transformation of his personality she always loved'¦it could be actual by the way as well as explaining the abundance of trees in The Eternal Arcane's artwork as well as the choice of a crucified woman for the graphical representation of The Wheel Of Pain!) which could stand as an anticipation of the following third part of this trilogy. Curt Benes's drumming solo in the involving track entitled The Lost Soul, probably the catchiest track of the Eternal Arcane, is worthy of being mentioned and praised.