Noveria – The Gates of the Underworld
Release Date: 25th August 2022
Label: Scarlet Records
Bandcamp
Genre: Progressive Power Metal
FFO: Kamelot, Avantasia.
Review By: Kira L. Schlechter
It’s hard to walk the line between the normal excess of the power metal genre and straying into an excess of, well, excess – or of hewing so close to the formula that you don’t try anything different.
That seems to be what’s befallen the Italian band Noveria on their fourth album, “The Gates of the Underworld.”
Singer Francesco Corigliano, guitarist Francesco Mattei, keyboardist Julien Spreutels, bassist Andrea Arcangeli, and drummer Davide Calabretta are certainly capable musicians – and they’re not afraid to display their capabilities. Frequently. But there’s a case to be made for a little restraint and a good bit of editing, which this album rather needs. Noveria seems to have a bit of trouble knowing when to say “enough.”
(By the way, the lyrics here are all written by Johanna Sofia Maria Andersson.)
The instrumental introduction “Heritage” sets the tone and musical direction from the start, dramatic with tempo and mood changes galore and all the hallmarks of power metal – the choir vocals, the walls of guitar riffs, the spotless, treble-heavy mix.
The official opener, “Origins,” is certainly structured well, with soaring melodies in the catchy pre-chorus and chorus and a solo section before the bridge that features keyboards as well as guitar. What does it mean, though? It’s not really clear. The first-person narrator makes reference to a “you” in the pre-chorus, but we don’t know who or what that “you” is. The first verse is tantalizing – “Have you ever come to question everything you see/Stronger than a superstition/It’s a parallel reality” – and so is the second – “These secret messages from the universe to me/Catastrophic premonitions/Far as the eye can see.” But the pre-chorus and chorus don’t do much to clarify, making references to “an illusion” and that “I should move on and get over it” and “The origins of what I have become” – like, OK, what have you become? The musical transition from the solo section to the bridge reflects the lyrics perfectly – it becomes introspective as the character muses, “A sudden realization/As the vision slowly fades/I was blinded by the will to find a meaning to it all,” and struggles to find meaning to make it worthwhile (“Then it wasn’t all for nothing/Then there’s meaning to the pain”). But again, it’s kind of unresolved, as “the vision fades/And the purpose too/All the struggles as I searched for truth/Was it all in vain after all.” What exactly are we talking about? It’s not terribly concrete, and at a tad over 8 and a half minutes, it’s a long opener.
“Descent,” too, has more potentially meaningful images and ideas set to a strong musical background. In the intro, where again the thoughtful tone of the music matches that of the lyrics, Francesco sings of “A desert in my mind/Hanging by a thread … You showed the way” – but who is the “you”? The first verse too is intriguing: “I tried so hard to belong in your world/The treacherous sanctuary of ‘take it easy, play it safe’/But I couldn’t forget my calling … To forget or to be forgotten.” But it’s a struggle to see where we’re going with any sort of story, or what the point is lyrically. The pre-chorus and uplifting chorus hint at the idea of finding salvation through presumably music (“Lose myself in sound/I feel it in the air” and “I’ll keep my sorrow and pain/Forge it into sound”), but the second verse and the bridge seem to veer from that and perhaps into relationship territory (“So hate me if you have to … Because we both believed/That I’d be with you to the end”), which I suppose makes the chorus make more sense. Maybe.
“Venom” begins with tense orchestration before settling into its groove. References to that mysterious “you” abound again (“You ventured out alone/You couldn’t have known/A stranger was watching you) to no real end, and now there’s an even more mysterious “them” (“It’s my only wish/To make them pay”). The bridge wonders, “As I move on further/I regret the choices I’ve made/Have I made a mistake?/Becoming the thing I hate” but we have no idea how we got to this epiphany (aside from perhaps the chorus and its reference to “the venom spreading through my veins”). There’s a nice build-up of tension in the pre-chorus, and the chorus, with its elusive, off-tempo rhythms, sounds great, as do all the songs themselves as a whole. The structures are interesting musically and aurally (even if the solos follow the same pattern of guitar-synth-more guitar and there’s little variation in tempo), but the themes or ideas we’re getting at lyrically continue to be maddeningly vague.
“Revenant” follows in pretty much the same pace as the previous tracks and incorporates the usual hectic, billion-mile-an-hour solo section. But there is somewhat of a message, despite the presence of more unknown “you”s: Being faced with an adversity (“Nobody could see it coming/Until it hit me hard” and “I thought that I was strong until/I was faced with the unknown”) and realizing that it’s best to live in the moment. The pop-tinged chorus is initially a cliché – “The past is dead and gone/The future’s yet to come” – but it’s nicely redeemed by the next line, “I’ll make my present worth the stay.” It’s the bridge, though, that really makes a clever comment on that theme: “I’m holding on for tomorrow/Watching the night turn to day/I recall no transcendence/Only decay/I don’t know what comes after/That’s why I live for today.” And it’s that insight that ultimately saves the song.
The title track, at 12-plus minutes, is the set piece of the album and is so far the best track narratively speaking, because it has a clear storyline. Its title is self-explanatory – this is a character’s harrowing journey into Hell. Starting with orchestration and thudding guitar chords, the scene is set with very visual details in a spoken intro: “As the world blurs out around you/In a vision, it appears.” It takes a bit to get into the first verse, but we’re rewarded with great imagery, of a road “paved with salt,” of “smoking pits” and a “barren wasteland of darkness and despair.” The chorus is a dirge, numbing and inevitable. The second verse is more of those vivid details, “human shapes emerging/Writhing, corrupt, and deformed,” “wretched souls, lost and forsaken.” When Francesco sings of the voices that “scream in fear of their fate,” he screams too.
The longer middle section takes you step by step through the terrifying process of being pulled into those gates, where “you’ll be broken/Everything you are/Will be gone,” and it’s really effective (despite a long solo section that pulls you a bit out of the action) – “the iron gates are opening,” then “Matter tearing in its folds/The great divide,” then “the hungry vortex/Unrelenting it revolves.” But it seems by the third verse, when the character is “so close to touch your impending doom,” there’s a salvation of sorts – “Something else reaching out/It pulls you away” to where there is “No more emotion/No more life, no more death.” “Darkness left behind you,” Francesco sings, but there’s always that possibility “That you’ll be back down there someday.” A repetition of the first chorus drives that point home, serving as a reminder of where we were. This could all be a big old metaphor for depression or being in the depths of despair, but whichever way you want to take it, it’s a fine track.
So if you take the title track into account, perhaps the “you” in “Ascent” is that depression, one’s own inner voice or inner struggle, being seduced by it (“Your colors seemed so bright”) and finally breaking free. The joyful, optimistic chorus says, “I’m taking back my soul/And I embrace the pain/Won’t lose my way again/Now watch me as I ascend.” Later, Francesco asserts he’s “On my way to healing … Discovering my own worth” and “Choosing my sanity and my dignity.” But in a great twist, the bridge is the realization of how much time was wasted and how far he still has to go: “I can’t rejoice/You’ve deprived me of all I had/Cutting the ties as I’m starting all over.” There are a bit more modulations in tempo here and great melodies in the pre-chorus and chorus. But too-long solos, especially before and after the bridge, get in the way of – and take you away from – the track’s powerful message.
And so if you take the title track AND “Ascent” into account, then maybe “Overlord” is a story of relapse, of falling back into those old, destructive thought patterns. It seems to be from the perspective of the depression or negative thoughts and directed toward our previous narrator – “You can’t escape me this time … I am the master of your state of mind” and later, “I fill your mind with despair … Striking you down with irrational fears.” That’s an effective technique, as is the chorus in conveying the narrator’s sense of helplessness – “No crying/Nor your sacrifices/Can save me from myself.”
But “Anima” kind of reverts back to the first part of the album, it seems – any connection to the possible theme set forth in the title track is kind of gone now. We do finally break the tempo mold on this one; it’s slower, more elongated, and therefore more emotional. It starts with a lovely sparse piano solo and melds into Andrea’s rich bass melodies (which have a starring role throughout). The solo section before the final chorus is nicely brief, beginning and ending with the same riff/orchestration pattern for continuity. We’re back to the mysterious “you” once more (“You came long before my time” and “You suddenly disappeared”) with no real clarification, but the band does have a gift for putting together a powerful, memorable chorus and the one here is no exception.
“Eternal” finishes things off with that “you” again (“And I felt so immortal/With you beside me” and “Will you remember me”) amid masses of wailing guitars (and Davide’s drumming, which is solid throughout). There is a definite message again – what will be my legacy, will anyone remember me when I’m gone – and there are some clever lyrical tricks thrown in too: they recall a line from “Revenant” when Francesco sings that he will “Reach for transcendence/As I fight my own decay” and he paraphrases Dylan Thomas when he vows he “won’t go gentle into the night.” Another predictable solo section of guitar/synth/guitar and another of many lengthy outros brings this long overall effort to a close.
(3 / 5)
