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Rating: Too often, people (myself included) lavish praise on albums, calling them masterpieces, that while enjoyable, don't really touch the heart: instead, there exists a very small circle of works that, in one way or another, turn out to be of fundamental importance in a person's life, accompanying them for several years or, in even rarer cases, for the entirety of their life.
"Dreams D'Azur" represents for me one of the works belonging to this latter category. I can't quite explain why I feel this wonderful album by the Roman band Novembre is so important to me; maybe it's the melancholy, the "greyness," the hope, that this album makes me perceive with each listen. Again, I don't know, but the masterpiece I'm speaking of (and for me, yes, this is a TRUE masterpiece) is of fundamental importance to me.
The refined minds that brought this hub of emotions to life are Carmelo Orlando (vocals and guitar), Giuseppe Orlando (drums), Antonio Poletti (guitars, in the role of session-man, called back because he was already present on the original album Wish I Could Dream It Again), and Thomas Negrini (keyboards, same discussion as for colleague Poletti), while Fabio Vignati is also on keyboards.
This complex and fascinating platter presents itself as a mix of different musical genres, starting from death (the band's true starting point), moving on to doom rhythms, progressive parts, and plenty of black metal, all united in perfect balance.
Describing the songs would almost be reductive given the complexity (not just instrumental, but passionate) of the pieces, and I wouldn't be able to describe just one (although I want to say a few more words about "The White Eyed") since each title has something striking, starting from the melancholy of tracks like "The Dream Of The Old Boats", to the lyricism of songs such as "Novembre" or "Nottetempo" (on the previous album this latter called Night/At Once) or even the blind violence of "Let Me Hate", "Old Lighthouse Tale", or "Sirens In Filth"; but what struck me the most is the presence of all the aforementioned characteristics in the piece "The White Eyed", opened by a very delicate acoustic guitar arpeggio, supporting Carmelo's excellent clean voice who finds himself reciting with an almost subdued voice a text that truly approaches the concept of melancholic poetry: a few seconds later, this almost peaceful atmosphere dissolves to make way for very intense parts which are counterbalanced by others more melancholic, less oppressive, and cutting.
The album is a great work, beyond everything (except tastes, which are personal and therefore indisputable), and I find it difficult for someone to claim to be faced with a bad album without providing a logical explanation (naturally :D); maybe not everyone will feel it as I do, but I know many will appreciate it and that some, like myself, will love it in the truest sense of the word.
Tracklist:
- The Dream Of The Old Boats
- Novembre
- Nottetempo
- Let Me Hate
- Sirens In Filth
- Swim Seagull In The Sky
- The Music
- Marea
- Old Lighthouse Tale
- The White Eyed
- Neanderthal Sands
- Christal
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
03 Nottetempo (04:14)
Mille anni orson'
Fantasie retro
Accadra domain
O puo darsi mai
A thousand years ago
Retro fantasies
It's gonna happen tomorrow
Or never
[Solo: Massimiliano]
Per mill'anni ancor
Scrivero il tuo nom'
Su spiagge del domani
E in poesie del mai
For a thousand years more
I'll write your name
On tomorrow's shores
And in poems if the never
04 Let Me Hate (03:21)
Let me hate
As black prevails
As blood invades
As love congeals
Let me hate
05 Sirens in Filth (06:21)
Bitterness blows in the heart
Like chilly draughts in the hall
Of a crystal castle
Lost among clouds made of gold
Those anxieting visions
Images behind frozen windows
Make my eyes bleed
Ebony blood
When the silvergray fluid shall crack reality's walls
Mixing with blood and filth as sirens swimming in pitch
When the sweet arcades of these desperate our owns
Trickle down upon yhe misery of this dead everyday life
Like pitch on your wings
Like a child lost in a war
Like dark paint upon a shiny picture
Like dirty sperm on a toy
And whwn the new star will shine of its own black
And there will be nowhere to shelter
Maybe they'll understand who we are
What we'll always cry for
06 Swim Seagull in the Sky (08:06)
[SOLO - Carmelo]
Speechless
Unreal
Drowning in an abyssal silence
Slowly moving through this immensity
I fly, swimming in this darkblue sky
It's cold, I'm scared and besides rust
Even ice covers these doors
[SOLO - Antonio]
God knows hoe I'd be awake now
God knows how my eyes would tear now
God knows how I wouldn't lose my way
God knows how scared I am
How the seagull would pass away:
[SOLO - Carmelo]
Swim seagull in the sky
[SOLO - Fabio]
07 The Music (04:06)
Incomprehensible like life
Unexplainable like infinity
My Lord, my God
An abstract entity the music is
Inconceivable like life
Immeasurable like infinity
My God, my Lord
It witnessed our beginning so the music is
Annihilating, upsetting
Mirror of joys and sorrows
It lives outside reality's walls
And we are it'd door to our dimension
It comes through our emotions
It runs through our art
And come out from our veins
From our pains
And so we use it right to annihilate
And so we use it to upset
Coming out from our pains
From our veins
11 Neanderthal Sands (04:17)
[SOLO - Carmelo]
Caught in the whirls of time
Cold winds bring me to timeless shores
Shattering, flowing down grain by grain
By the sandglasses of the past
An innate memory
An anxieting deja-vu
The unconscious awareness
Of the error we are
The unconscious awareness
Of the exception we are in the universe
[SOLO - Carmelo, Antonio]
We are alone
12 Christal (04:05)
Once she told me about a dog
Which abandoned by its owner
It died of melancholy
Since the it was all a little bit clearer
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