Somnent – Gardens From Graves
Release Date: 25th October 2021
Label: GS Productions
Bandcamp
Genre: Doom, Death Metal, Epic Melodic Doom Metal.
FFO: Opeth, Katatonia, Daylight Dies.
Review By: Martha Skourteli
I’ve always had a preference for one man bands. My brain relates them to the classical composers that have created masterpieces, writing all the music themselves for entire orchestras to perform. Even more appreciation goes to the artists that not only create the songs, but also perform every job on the end product.
Such a band is Somnent from Florida, USA, the artistic expression of Giovanni Vigliotti.
Somnent live in the doom death metal field and they are a must-check if you don’t know them already. They’ve been active since 2015 and already have an EP from 2015 called Eventide (for fans of instrumentals like myself, check Disseverance from this EP), the full length Sojourn of 2017 while their second full length album Gardens From Graves comes out on the 25th of October.
Their sound on this new full-length is like a combination of Damnation and Deliverance albums by Opeth. Giovanni puts way more clean vocals on this album than before, giving more trust in the tone of his voice, which is really good. It has a significant amount of warmth and paints his songs in the right color.
In Gardens From Graves brings us 7 beautiful songs, plus an acoustic version of Fragments and one bonus track (Resolve).
The lyrics have to do with loss, sorrow and painful realizations in life that come through bad experiences and time. While listening, it’s easy to find yourself just agreeing and nodding your head like you know how true it is, what each song is saying. Just a little example of this:“Sometimes the strongest ones are the ones who cry the most
Sometimes the bravest ones carry the greatest fear” (Blackened Heart).
The music of each song perfectly matches the message the lyrics try to send. You get very calm guitar tones accompanied only by his voice (check the acoustic bonus track Resolve) where all the sorrow is portrayed in the simplest way possible but you can feel it’s so draining and sore, while you also get stronger guitar parts accompanied by growls (check Acquiescence) that present a faster tempo but again express the struggle, coming this time from the effort to heal pain.
I didn’t find one second in the album where something sounded strange or out of place. All songs have just the correct structure, the right amount of heaviness or calmness and the whole puzzle is not missing any piece.
My top 3 favorite songs (I listened to these ones just a tiny bit more than the rest) are Silhouette, Acquiescence and Blackened Heart.
Overall Gardens From Graves is an outstanding album, with, once again, one very talented person doing everything at such a skillful level.
There has to be a future for Somnent and I want to believe that Giovanni will continue to create music and being on his own won’t be an obstacle (sadly many times we have seen similar artists either making music very rarely – Forest Of Shadows and The Fall Of Every Season are such cases – or even disappearing from the scene).
(5 / 5)
