Italy’s La Morte Viene Dallo Spazio (Death Comes from Space) has utterly triumphed with their debut album Trivial Visions! Taking the sound cultivated from their first ep Sky Over Giza, the group expands heavily on their psychedelic songwriting in ways that are truly creative and evolved.
It can be difficult to put this style of music into a category that’s easily understood but that’s what’s so good about it. The closest I could come up with is Trivial Visions is an eclectic/eccentric mix of Pink Floyd and Cirque Du Soleil coming together to create their interpretation of a Psychedelic Black Metal album with Progressive, Doom, and Stoner influences. In addition to the interesting songwriting is a range of fascinating production choices which at first sound a little strange but make sense for the types of sounds employed on the album. There are a lot of whirrings, theremins, samples, distorted motifs, and ambiance. At first, the sound will be jarring as the expected modern Metal tones and production aren’t really present and are replaced with something I could only equate to Spaghetti Sci-Fi Metal (in the same vein as a Spaghetti Western). It would be described as thin in the drums, thick in the bass, growling in the guitar, and drenched in ridiculous amounts of ambient echoes and delays.
The album begins with the instrumental mid-tempo “Lost Horizon” that engulfs the listener with chorused bass tones, delay-laden guitars, and processive percussion, building into a crescendo of Black Metal style riffs and fast kick drums. The sound staging is excellent and dramatic with this opener as it begins with the sparsity of traveling a dark road at night to the helplessness of being abducted by aliens, theremin whirrs ascending and descending all the while.
The transition into the danceable title track “Trivial Visions” picks up right where Horizon left off, this time with a cavernous flute and odd time signatures. After about a minute the track slams into a high-toned distorted bassline paired with a groovy drum pattern while vocalist Melissa Crema recites a story in the background. This is probably where I have a slight problem with the album, her vocals are a little too quiet to make out what she’s singing clearly but at the same time that effect works in a way as it makes her voice a part of the ambiance rather than the lead feature.
“Cursed Invader” and “Oracolo Della Morte” sees the band plateau a little with the main theme of the tracks repeating as an ensemble of motifs, effects and noises flutter about as though the band has descended into the unstructured chaos of a jam session.
We are then led to the track “Ashes” that starts to get into doomy territory as the guitars thicken up into a thick fuzz but retains the motifs of sound carried by the previous tracks with the vocals coming back in, ending in a thrashy, cracked af pairing of guitar solos.
From here I’ll quit with the blow-by-blow report of the songs, mainly to save some surprises for potential listeners. Though what is incredible to hear on this release is how far the band has come in its development. Their previous releases were relatively straightforward if a little odd (in a good way). Trivial Visions is an interpretation of many musical styles glued together to make something somewhat unhinged and out of control while at the same time playing by their own rule book, an exercise in how far a band can be pushed creatively.
As much as I loved the album, the only thing I would have liked to have heard is a little less in the way of jamming and more in the way of focused ideas. Tracks like Trivial Visions nail what I’m talking about so hard! Otherwise that critique should be taken lightly as this is one of the most unique albums I’ve heard in the past year. They’re now my favorite Italian band.
It’s Roswell in your speaker system, The aliens have come to probe your ears and probe your… other areas. A truly unique and interesting body of work that deserves the genre I’ve made specifically for it: Spaghetti Sci-Fi Metal.
