Tracks
1.Lui
2. I’m Goin’ Alone
3. The Circus
4. Deceiver
5. Breakin’Down
6 Killin’Game
7. Blindness
8. Farewell
9. A Chance from Him
10. The Revenant’s Eternal Love
11. The Calling from Isaiah
12. Bang Bang
13. The Seagul’s Creed
14. Fade To Grey
15. Nails
16. Heartbound Eve

Band:
Morgan Lacroix: Vocals
Terry Horn: Guitars, Keys, Programming
Furyo: Drums
Max River: Bass

Discography:
Fairy Tales From Hell’s Caves (2001)
A Whisper Of Dew (2002)
Madhouse (2005)

Info

Released 21/11-2009
Reviewed 25/12-2009

Links:
mandragorascream.it
myspace
massacre

Hailing from Italy does this band of Italian guys and a female singer. They do confess themselves to the gothic side of the metal genre but not in the regular way a female fronted gothic metal band stands musically. The singer of Mandragora Scream has a different female voice, she has a deeper and darker voice than the usual female goth singer. Another thing that comes to mind when analysing this album is the slow pace at which most of the songs move and of course the voice which I did not notice was female before I read about the band and viewed a music video before writing this review.

Another fun fact or thing about this band is the name where Mandragora of course is the family of the mandrake plant which of course is a plant said to have magical properties and also having some medical properties. The fact that you take a plant name and then add scream at the end is a weird thing as plants cannot speak, or scream even though they are considered to have magical properties. Then of course the additive scream is not really a suitable part of the name for this band considered the mellow tone of it and also considering the fact that their is no screaming whatsoever going on. I would consider Mandragora whisper a much more fitting name but then again, who am I to question band names?

Productionwise this record sound really well, it has an interesting sound that suits the style of the band’s music really well. Speaking of which, all songs are not of the slower kind there are parts where the music and intensity of the music speeds up, parts that makes the 59 minutes of playing time a little more bearable but those minutes are still too many and that is the main issue when it comes to this record. It is too bad about those too many minutes as I enjoy the music on this record.

going to some time earlier; this record starts with an intro track that is just that, an introduction to the rest of the record. It shows what we can expect and so on and so forth. The ”real” music starts with a track called I’m Going Alone which is the best track of the record and feels like it is everything this band ought to be about, slow moving melodic and deep, almost a doomy feel to it. That is how I would like Volturna to have been for 39 minutes, no more than that, I don’t think records should be longer than about 40 minutes.

Musically Volturna is very good, it has good melodies, good vocals, good production, the problem is just the length of the record, more or less an hour of this kind of music is just a bit too much, a bit too long and did I say a little too much?

I think this band should have stepped back a little and looked at their record from the outside a little and realised that they should have dumped three or four of the tracks and in that way made a shorter record that would have been much more interesting. But then again I don’t trust them to read this review and think: ”hey what a revelation, we’d better do that the next time we make a record” since I am just this writer for this obscure web publication. But if they did they would at least get one good review for their record. But then again there might be others who like what they have done with this record. After all I am not being negative about the music just the fact that it takes too long to listen through it.

So, in the end I would say that Mandragora Scream partly succeeds in making a very good record, the music is good and everything else is good, an hour is just too much of the good.

HHHHHHH