Gardenjia
Epo

Gardenjia hails from Puglia, but their sound can almost transport you to the Nordic lands. Their project focuses on music where expressiveness and exploration come first.

Incurable lovers of prog metal and extreme technicality, the four musicians manage to bring their ideas together through "EPO," a debut that has much to offer those passionate about complex sound structures and art in music. Their offer is anything but easy listening; within each single episode, a multitude of solutions can easily disorient less attentive listeners, solutions that—if listened to carefully—give birth to a very interesting and contemporary record.

Meshuggah, Tesseract, and the new American prog/death wave have certainly influenced Gardenjia, a band that has learned to appreciate hard work in the studio and to overturn past achievements in the search for semi-perfection. "EPO" contains various metal schools of thought: one might mention the Scandinavian metal school given the cleanliness of the sounds and the quality of songwriting, tech-prog metal made in the U.S.A., rock in some cases and, why not, djent, although there's very little electronic music within it. Musically excellent, Gardenjia has found in classic vocal dualism the path on which to structure their lyrics, moving on a melodic line that suits the more relaxed moments of the album and on a growl that knows how to enhance the album’s "heavier" episodes. Synths and sax then add an even more varied flavor to the songs, a tangible sign of how technically prepared the quartet is and in a constant phase of growth/stylistic evolution.

Closing the package beautifully, an elegant digipack with noir graphics whose only flaw is the absence of a booklet inside; given the peculiarity of "EPO," being able to read the lyrics would not have been unwelcome. "In Blue," "Shapes Of Greys," and "In Dusk" are excellent examples of what is discussed in this review. If you, too, are lovers of good heavy-seasoned music, step forward without too much hesitation, Gardenjia is to be counted among the best promises Italy has to offer nowadays.