Temperance
The Earth Embraces Us All

Sober Italians return with their third album in the same amount of years, and with this new album they conclude that The Earth Embraces Us All which it sort of does even though some people don’t seem to care about that. But lets not dwell too much on the Earth and what it does for us even though it is the most important thing in life, lets instead check out what these sober Italians are up to. They have enlisted Gustavo Sazes for the lovely artwork and Simone Mularoni for the mix and mastering – the latter is usually a means for making quality music so let us see what these guys can do.

They are a quartet fronted by very competent singer Chiara Tricarico who states that this is the band’s most mature and complex album to date. And she is right; although in their complexity they end up somewhat prolix and should really have taken the phrase “less is more” to heart. It was an album that created a debate in my mind, a debate over what rating I would give this album because it is really great in its grand approach, symphonic powerful metal and everything but it is too long and towards the end I find myself not really listening anymore – not because it is bad but because you get too much of it.

Moreover I think we can also conclude that the production is very strong, I really like the soundscape and the vocals from Chiara are great. We get several really strong tracks but I still think they should have ended with Advice From a Caterpillar rather than playing more than 17 minutes past that, perhaps the advice from the caterpillar wasn’t very good. I find that I want to say “mi piace” about the album when I listen to it but when I get closer to the end I find that I no longer want to. It is good but because they don’t know where to end I have to give them a somewhat lower rating than they should have had if they had only kept it shorter.

At the Edge of Space and Maschere are my favourite tracks, I especially like that they sing in Italian on the second one mentioned although the first one is better. The long ending track is also rather good but I always find myself no longer listening at that point which makes it feel much less good than it is. They are diligent and releasing albums very quickly but perhaps they should give it more time to kill some darlings and thus create a more dynamic and even better album. I find this to be a strong album that could easily have been made much better.

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