Satyrian
Eternitas

This time, no one will fall for it. Passing off the Satyrian as the revelation of the new millennium among the thousands of emerging bands dedicated to gothic metal? Please! It's a ridiculous experiment with no chance of success attempted by Frontiers, the record label of the newcomer Dutch seven-piece.

First of all, what the musicians involved in the project propose is hardly related to dark music; it surely approaches a light and simplistic form of heavy metal whose songs are invariably composed of catchy and singable (but not unforgettable) tunes, melodies almost sunny but cloaked in that purely artificial "dark" flavor that German dancefloors seem to go crazy for. Moreover, from the cover, the band's intentions are already clear to me, but far from me the intention of dismissing it after a single listen. So here is the result of an in-depth analysis of the twelve tracks on "Eternitas."

The off-key electronic contaminations and the now canonical support of the overused symphonic embellishments (by Jan Yrlund, once engaged with the baroque Lacrimosa) can pass, as well as the atypical and rather questionable choice to include three vocalists behind the microphones (namely the still unripe Judith Stüber, the brilliant Kemi Vita of The Dreamside, whom I would have preferred to hear sing in albums of different manufacture, perhaps more suited to her remarkable abilities, and the inelegant Roman Schönsee of Pyogenesis, who had already collaborated with Kemi for the album "Mirror moon"); but, despite the many, perhaps too many elements mixed by the Dutch band in their sound with the clear intention of being pleasing to as heterogeneous an audience as possible, what Satyrian proposed in their debut album did not convince me at all.

It is the title track that opens the dance (no other expression would be more appropriate): a catchy slap in the face of originality that recalls an infinity of songs from countless other bands. "Invictus" is annoyingly repetitive due to an overuse of electronics and male vocals of dubious aesthetic taste. "Feel the rush" presents the usual alternation between soft piano passages and metal gallops, belonging to thousands of other formations but worsened by the nauseating performance of Satyrian and further degraded by its excessive length. "My legacy" is entirely built on the catchiness of the chorus and completely devoid of sentiment. "The dark gift" transports us with its synthesizers and cheerful disco-pop keyboards directly to the frantic and crazed lights of a dance floor. Then, comic romantic aspirations intervene in "Sacred lies" and in "Bridge of death" the band even attempts to propose itself as the folk band of the moment, presenting their pathetic ditty with the supposed medieval flavor (but still danceable) with rather execrable results. To close the album, we find a handful of far from memorable songs that bore with their keyboard-driven and cadenced gothic-rock but are inevitably bland, among which only the graceful and passionate vocal lines of Kemi in "This dream" stand out, in the end, the only salvageable episode among the twelve.

For heaven's sake, some might even like certain contaminations, but I wonder what feelings animate Satyrian's music. I always have and always will hold the belief that a band's music can be considered art only when it manages the difficult task of transmitting sensations to the listener, even in the absence of originality. Otherwise, it will always be just cold and unnatural associations of notes that can only please the presumed and increasingly numerous teenagers who love easy choruses and dance rhythms, pathetic slaves of the throwaway systems of modern society.

Light-years away from adequacy, this "Eternitas" remains one of the ugliest albums produced by the prevailing new trend in the European metal scene, unworthy of being listened to, irritating for an honest fan of gothic music but a potential rich dish for the trash bin closest to your home.