DECALOGUE OF DARKNESS

This album was my first musical encounter with the Italian prog formation DAAL, I was very curious to their sound after I noticed so many euphoric words about their two 2018 releases on the Internet. Before listening I visited DAAL its amazing website and watched a serie of music videos with tracks from the Decalogue Of Darkness album. Soon legendary medieval Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch came to my mind: a dark, horrifying and macabre world, full of death, weird creatures, devils and religious symbols. These often dark and ominous video images match with DAAL its music on this album: lots of melancholical atmospheres that frequently alternate between dreamy, dynamic accellarations and bombastic eruptions, embellished with omnipresent Mellotron violins. These musical contrasts generates a lot of tension and turns listening tot his DAAL album into a very compelling experience. During my listening sessions often the early work of Swedish prog band Anekdoten come to my mind. This seemed no coincidence, I asked drummer Davide Guidoni about that, he answered that keyboard player Alfio Costa loves Swedish band Morte Macabre ' featuring two Anekdoten members!

Anyway, I am delighted about this second 2018 DAAL album, also due to the outstanding and prolific ex-The Watch guitar player Ettore Salati (also great work in The RedZen) his contributions as a guest musician, again, after two previous appearances in 2011 and 2014. He easily switches from sensitive to agressive, and succeeds to give the music an extra dimension with his varied and moving guitar sound.

Although DAAL plays on a very good level during the ten tracks, I would like to mention my highlights. Beautiful twanging guitars and Mellotron violin, howling electric guitar runs in the dynamic, ominous and compelling Chapter I. Warm interplay between tender piano and glorious Mellotron violin and venomous Fripperish guitar play in a heavy climate in Chapter II.

A slow rhythm with the focus on a mindblowing 'gentle chainsaw guitar sound' in the vein of Fripp in Chapter IV.

In Chapter VIII a splendid build-up, from dreamy with piano and Mellotron flute and violin to a bombastic eruption with Mellotron violins (with echoes from Museo Rosenbach), powerful drum beats and heavy wah -wah drenched guitar riffs (goose bumps!), in the end subtle harpsichord and twanging guitar, what an awseome composition!

But my favourite is the final Chapter X, a cascade of flowing shifting moods, from the tender piano intro and slow rhythm with howling guitar (evoking Andy Latimer his 'bluesy emotion') to a break with again that Fripperish 'gentle chainsaw guitar sound' and an accelaration with a propulsive mid-tempo, a dynamic rhythm-section and a lush Mellotron sound, concluded with short Mellotron choir drops, wow!

Although I am impressed by DAAL its first 2018 release, this second 2018 DAAL release is my cup of tea: more in the tradition of Seventies symphonic rock featuring awesome work on the guitar and loaded with The Mighty Tron, what an emotional experience, highly recmommended!

The first edition of this review was recently published on the Dutch progrock website Background Magazine.

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