L'Impero Delle Ombre
I Compagni Di Baal

"Who is the first of the kings?
The first of the kings is Baal, a three-headed demon who rules over the eastern part of Hell."

This is how the 1968 French TV series "Les Compagnons De Baal" begins, which serves as the concept behind the second album release of L'Impero delle Ombre. I am convinced that many times in music, especially in new releases, it’s the details that make the difference, a kind of magic that is created around an object or some notes that make them seem special. In this album that doesn’t shine for its originality or brilliant ideas that add a piece to our own heavy doom scene, there is something magical perhaps given precisely by the connection with the French film work.

I was referring to the details, so it is necessary to provide some from a personal perspective: on a Saturday morning after walking through the alleys of Genoa and reaching the record shop-label Black Widow, I return home with this album and, even before listening to it, I stream the seven episodes of the series from which the CD is derived and I am ensnared. I become fascinated by this sort of secret sect trying to dominate the world through killings and dark rituals, but above all by the director's cinematic style that combines ante litteram charade themes like Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut with B-grade horror style drops.
L'Impero delle Ombre, together with the Black Widow owners, discuss and agree to follow up the band's first album with a concept based on this congregation and create, in my view, a winning combination that charms the viewer far beyond the music.

The musical coordinates are Sabbath-like, although the language used is Italian, but without great innovations or noteworthy ideas except for the good participation on keyboards by Oleg Smirnoff (Death SS, Eldritch, and Vision Divine) and some remarkable guitar passages in recreating the dark and mysterious atmosphere of the TV series. The beginning, however, is electrifying, after the intro-quotation that also opens this review, perhaps the best two tracks of the album are heard, "Diogene" and "Divoratori della Notte", the former dedicated to the mythical drunken journalist knowledgeable about the sect's secrets and the latter narrating the perverse mechanisms of the Companions of Baal. While Black Sabbath remains always the first point of reference, the Cardellino brothers (Giovanni "John Goldfinch" Cardellino: vocals and
Andrea Cardellino: guitars) display great inspiration in the song structure and the care of the choruses, which will be less evident in some subsequent tracks. Following is "Ballata per Liliana" which takes on slightly seventies moods but leaves room for Andrea to build good melodies with the guitar, but it’s perhaps in the central part that less relevant episodes are found, where some solutions present in "Cosmochronos" or a few flaws in an otherwise great "Sogni di Dominio" seem to force and draw from the less creative part of classic metal. It all ends with a cover of Black Sabbath's "Snowblind", as if to say, this is where we came from: present and future of our inspirations. Maybe then the first of the kings is Iommi and not Baal...

After seven years from their debut album, L'Impero delle Ombre plays an important card with this album that reprises the dark atmospheres of the French TV series, maintaining that gloomy and underground vibe which, in my opinion, is also the strength of the film. Oleg Smirnoff's work with his hammond, inserts, and ideas gives movement and chisels the album, but the permanent spot for a keyboardist seems to still be vacant for this group that still bases all its creative activity on the Cardellino brothers.
Those who are passionate about this genre and these atmospheres must trust the band and the excellent intuitions of Black Widow that have brought (so to speak) this CD to light; others will find few emotions in these notes and especially will not understand the sense of rediscovering these occult atmospheres of the seventies. Just like the Genoese Segno del Comando did in 1997 with the series directed by Daniele D'Anza, with Carla Gravina and Ugo Pagliai, the return of L'Impero delle Ombre will delight the cultists of the most eclectic hard/doom, but in my opinion, it maintains naiveties that weigh on the final judgment.