Beatrik
Requiem Of December

Breathing in the cold air of the early morning hours, you wander through the forest, treading on a bed of dry leaves that fell a few months ago from the trees surrounding us. The sky, a pale gray, almost white, stretches above the arboreal canopy, and the smell of earth and wet wood penetrates the nostrils and goes straight to the brain. Stoic birds chirp desperately in search of food, the trickling of a stream that won't surrender to the cold is barely perceptible. No other presence invades this desolate natural spectacle. Winter has fallen with its cold embrace to bring about the icy desolation that only Nature can provoke; all forms of life are fleeing to other shores, or are trudging sadly toward a long rest. Or they will die amidst the white blanket that will soon cover the forest. As you continue walking, you glimpse a Romanesque chapel lost among the trees, an ancient resting place for travelers and a refuge of salvation for the population who, to escape raids, took shelter in the forest. Entering the small place of worship, you are surprised by the splendid frescoes adorning the walls, made barely visible by the dim light offered by the candles. The bells toll mournfully the start of a new hour, an organ in the background peeks into the spectator's mind. An aura of desolate and cold despair envelops the place, the frescoes depicting scenes of daily life taking shape, revealing the lives of the villagers, their habits, their customs. Confusion assails the mind, a palpable sadness torments it, memories of loved ones resurface. Ended friendships, lost loves, pleasurable sensations that have passed or, worse, that might have been experienced, leave a feeling of bitterness mixed with anger; you are shaken by a shiver and let yourself fall to the ground to think about how the things and feelings you experience in life are in vain.

This is the chilling picture offered by Beatrik, an Italian band from Alto Adige born in 1998 dedicated to a cold Black/Doom (or Depressive Black, if you will). The group, for those who do not know them, consists of two members: Frozen Glare Smara, guitarist, singer, and true mastermind of the project, and drummer Vidharr. The work reviewed here is "Requiem Of December," an album released in 2005 by Avantgarde Music, following the excellent "Journey Through The End Of Life".

Once again, Beatrik show that they know how to do their job well; "Requiem Of December" is not a copy of its predecessor; with this album, the group abandons the cold Black/Doom of the previous album, which featured a feral and cold style with scream inspired by the first Norwegian scene, to land on a more personal style, with hoarser screams and even more elongated tempos.

It would also be wrong to think that this is another band that advocates suicide for easy publicity. Beatrik's lyrics, as stated by Frozen Glare Smara, are "inspired by the moments before dying, the sadness that arises during a funeral, the anguish of knowing you have to die".

The opener of the album is "My Funeral To Come", a song over ten minutes long, which opens with the mournful sound of bells and an organ, which give way to the monolithic melody offered by the guitar and the singer's desperate scream. The song then evolves, increases in rhythm until it explodes into a feral blast beat, then fades with quieter tones until concluding with the melody presented at the beginning. The organ/bell dualism will be reprised at the end of the other five tracks. "Eternal Rest", the third song of the work, instead opens with a slow guitar that shapes a hypnotic melody. After a few minutes, this hypnotic motif fades until it ceases; you hear the sound of a stream, birds chirping in the background. A beautiful repeated guitar arpeggio accompanies the sound of nature and preludes the return of the singer's scream, which sadly prophesies the end of his existence. This is the calmest moment of the album, and when the sound of the organ arrives, there is the awareness that even this moment of sweet desolation is over and one will return to the swirl of anguish. The work then concludes with the good "Returning After a Death".

The negative sides of the work are surely represented by the repetitiveness and redundancy of the songs, perhaps due to an excessively extreme musical proposition (here just "chewing" some doom is not enough).

In conclusion, "Requiem Of December" is a beautiful album (perhaps inferior to the previous one), rich in pathos and anguish, but it will make you happy only in moments of profound desolation and only if you are truly accustomed to extreme doom. I therefore recommend listening only in the darkest moments, where it is possible to fully empathize with this album.

Rating 83/100