Stolen Babies
There Be Squabbles Ahead

Oneiric. Entertaining. Magical. Eccentric to the extreme. Is it a bit daring to call them the heirs of Mr. Bungle?

Yet, the ability to entertain the listener for a full forty-six minutes is definitely there. Even from an aesthetic point of view, they flaunt their extravagance and throw their eclecticism in your face, dressed and made up as clowns (indeed, a bit gloomy and gothic clowns), armed with plenty of good taste and theatricality to spare.

The voice of the fascinating Dominique Lenore Persi is perdition (pardon the pun!): to transition with enviable ease from a clean, playful, and sexy-toned voice to a completely schizoid and piercing scream is not something everyone can do. And undoubtedly, every other member of this new, unfortunately unknown phenomenon of the most avant-garde and sophisticated metal, does their job excellently. We cannot overlook the collaboration with the great Sleepytime Gorilla Museum (Carla Kihlstedt contributed her violin on the tracks Swint? Or Slude? and Push Button) and the fact that Gil Sharone is also the drummer for the bizarrely experimental killing machines known as Dillinger Escape Plan, Mathcore (another group I greatly appreciate).

The Stolen Babies and their multifaceted diversions have given me hours and hours of absolute fun and entertainment, surely thanks also to their "circus" attitude. After all, it's said that they are a mix of dark cabaret (a genre I discovered thanks to them, flavorful and ironic yet at the same time dark) and heavy metal, but the gift of these bands from the avant-garde wave (among which I cite the unavoidable UneXpect, Maudlin Of The Well, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Diablo Swing Orchestra, and so on) is to intelligently overtake the very concept of "metal". In the cauldron, alongside the already mentioned dark cabaret, post-punk and goth rock influences are also simmering.

From the very first track, Spill!, probably the most "metallic" along with the blistering Mind Your Eyes, one can perceive the various influences among the hammering and obsessive riffs and the magnificent voice of Dominique. In Awful Fall, on the other hand, the bass takes center stage.

Filistata, the first peak of excellence on the album, showcases all the circus-like and exuberant spirit of the Stolen Babies, with a truly catchy melody that captures you from the first listen and repeats throughout the song, culminating only at the end in a chaotic succession of riffs, while Dominique screams: "Will I have wasted years?"

But the supreme track of the album, towering above all others, is in my opinion the subsequent A Year Of Judges, simply perfect, obsessive, harmonious, dominated by a repressed rage that is only unleashed in the explosive chorus. Here too, a chaotic and very metallic ending, in short: no frills. We continue with the spectacular So Close, characterized by the genius chorus as usual by the band, and with the dark cabaret-oriented Tablescrap, but the crescendo of the album is broken by the dragging and bizarre intermezzo Swint? Or Slude?, for me

It picks up again with Mind Your Eyes, the most "violent" of the album, paired with another true cornerstone of this little gem called There Be Squabbles Ahead: Lifeless. A melodic, melancholic, touching, original, but above all... sincere ballad! Truly, like I hadn't heard in a very long time. From the oneiric shores of Lifeless, we then dive into the second TRUE gem of the album, the magnificent Tall Tales. Beware: due to its repetitive and obsessive pace (but don't take these as pejorative adjectives!) it causes addiction.

Excellent is the subsequent Push Button, with its gothic and at the same time humorous tones, for which our own even made a video. In my opinion, attention wavers a bit with Gathering Fingers (the second "flaw of the album") which I don't find bad, to be clear, but not at the same level as the performances that preceded it. If in Lifeless melancholy triumphed, in the genius and conclusive The Button Has Been Pushed it's euphoria that takes the lead, and the Stolen Babies put in style the cherry on the cake, a cake so varied and tasty as to have not been seen in a long time.

Waiting eagerly for a second full-length, for now, I continue to enjoy this cheerful and bubbly product almost devoid of smudges, one of the masterpieces of Avant-Garde Metal, produced by one of the best and most promising female-fronted bands of all time.