DECALOGUE OF DARKNESS

After a long period of silent work, in 2018 Daal expressed their creativity by releasing contemporaneously on Agla Records two excellent albums: "Decalogue Of Darkness" and "Navels Falling Into A Living Origami". The first one features dark atmospheres and vintage sounds that could recall some seventies soundtracks of horror films. Here the line up features along with Alfio Costa (Mellotron, Moog, piano, synthesizers) and Davide Guidoni (drums, percussion) the guests Ettore Salati (guitars) and Bobo Aiolfi (bass). According to the liner notes, this work is dedicated to the memory of some dear persons that the musicians lost and miss but who are still present in their hearts. The art cover, taken from a 1508 woodcut portraying the devil taking the soul of a dying man, and the pictures in the booklet try to describe the musical content, conceived as "an inner mirror reflecting the dark side of a man with his nightmares and fears"...

Despite the gloomy subject matter and the Gothic art cover, the music has nothing to do with depressing black metal or dissonant passages evoking infernal sceneries. On the contrary, all along the untitled ten chapters in which is divided this long album, the music is always characterised by a sumptuous, symphonic beauty... Delicate, dreamy passages evolve into nervous parts with the rhythm section giving a strong sense of tension while light, soaring melodies alternate with sudden surges of dark, mysterious energy. At times bands such as Goblin or L'Albero del Veleno might come to mind, but this work has it's own originality and deserves a very attentive listening from the very first notes to the last...

By chance, recently, while re-listening to this album I was reading a novel by Gaston Leroux and I stumbled in a passage that in my opinion seems to capture its spirit: "He called out, with all the strength of the sorrow that filled his breast... He called in the way in which you call not upon a living, but upon a dear dead woman, in the hope that she may appear to you. For there are moments when human sorrow does not dread ghosts and when it conjures up shades to press them to its heart, without trembling on the threshold of the great mystery; moments when love would have the dead come forth from the dark and when it is astonished - so loud has been its call - that the spirits do not come and kiss its lips!" (quote from Balaoo, by Gaston Leroux). Well, I think that this music is a kind of powerful call to the ghosts, a lay requiem mass able to stir emotions and even to express a sense of positivity by exorcising the evil spirits of melancholy and sadness.

One of my favourite 2018 albums!