Novembers Doom
The Novella Reservoir

THE REVIEW

"The novella reservoir" sees the light in 2007 and is situated in the genre between Death and Doom. Line-up consists of: Kuhr, Marchese, Nunez, Roberts, Djuricic, mixing developed by Dan Swano, a veteran in the field.

The album opens with 'rain', with bass, guitar, and drums immediately setting the rhythm, then leaving the rhythm guitars to follow Kuhr's gurgling growl; the rhymes are slow and repeat over some verses, while the content aims to give a sense of drowning, amplified by the artwork: watercolors depicting places of perdition.

The title track instead starts with acoustic and rhythm guitar, slow rhymes where the growling alternates with the metallic-timbred clean voice that quotes: you're not the saviour of this world/a simple life has come to pass/you're not the answer to my faith/i'll never give you what you need, while the sound turns somber again.

'Drown the inland mere' boasts a pressing drum accompanied by guitar, which alternates the tempo with Kuhr. The lyrics, if possible, darken further, towards oneself, and towards others. A special mention goes to 'Twilight innocence', where the coordinates vary: acoustic guitar and clean voice in the foreground express a feeling of subdued love.

Closing the sentimental parenthesis, 'The voice of failure' restores the sense of suffocation, with rhymes guiding the shipwrecked listener through a dark swamp. The percussion intensifies in small series, while the bass plays frantically. The only oxygen comes from brief clean voice passages. 'They were left to die' starts with simple guitar chords, distorted as always, and with rhymes expressing torment and death as a consequence of religious sin. It is followed by 'Dominate the human strain', which perfects the theme of sin.

With 'Leaving this', the sentimental and moving parenthesis reopens, where drums and faintly strummed guitar accompany the metallic voice of the dragged-out singing describing a situation of abandonment by a loved person and the ensuing anguished fear of missing them.

In conclusion, a clean album - as if from a deluge - where the instruments follow very slow cadences and overlap in an orderly manner. Also recommended for those wanting to attempt an approach to the genre, starting from its inner character, well expressed here.