The 3rd And The Mortal
Painting On Glass

Known for having released the first, sensational album by Motorpsycho “Demon Box”, as well as monumental Extended Playings like the “Mountain EP”, the Norwegian label Voices of Wonder now offers a less known name to the public of the “Scandinavian grunge-rock” area (another leading name: Hedge Hog), although they come from vaguely “metal” stylistic territories. No avant-garde heavy metal like Blind Guardian, nor sophisticated gothic doom-metal like Paradise Lost: the only metallic aspect in this work remains the harmonic interplay of distorted guitar sounds that envelops much more ethereal music. Exactly, we could say we are facing a hybrid project definable as “Dead Can Dance in a metal version”. That is, the romantic, unattainable, and esoteric band of Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry in an unlikely remix by Young Gods based on sampling riffs by Lars Ulrich and Richard Hampson, or the dreamy and arcane ballads of Echo and The Bunnymen reinterpreted by Helmet.

Difficult to categorize, therefore, for its elusive character this project with a name that echoes other groups like This Mortal Coil or His Name Is Alive, all labeled 4AD, also because the overall structure of the work, monumental and conceptual, appears more like an opera than a simple collection of songs. It is easier to realize what this Norwegian act manages to produce by listening to the CD rather than trying to describe its references. The thematic beginning with “Magma”: apocalyptic and imposing, where the broad epic periods are punctuated by percussive rhythm alternated with suspensions, and wrapped in vortices of post-space rock electric noise in the manner of Spacemen 3 and Main; fierce, saturated, and cold. These guitar flows intersect with “off-screen” voices that are almost figurative of spectral faces, now blurred and grainy until they disappear, now clearer: this is the case in more settled and sweet moments, like “Chrystal Orchyds”, “Veiled Distances”; static industrial ambient pauses intervene, delicate guitar flourishes, rhapsodic reprises, powerful and cadenced, with the entire work being delimited by the two instrumental interludes “Aurora Borealis” and “Aurora Australis”. A suite for strings and piano with the extraordinary participation of Neurosis? Giorgio Moroder at the mixer for Nuclear Blast groups? Metallica engaging in a reinterpretation of the Odyssey with arrangements by Vangelis?

The impression is that at least in part the “elusive” character of this work is intended by its Authors. Elusive or slippery, fragile and sharp as glass, that is, lava that cooled becomes a sort of “immobile liquid,” an ocean-sea frozen in its illusory wave motion, in which the journey of Ulysses becomes what is captured in these music: eternal and timeless. An almost successful masterpiece.