Forefront-project of incalculable value, the Donamorte create music that transcends from every conceivable simplicism reserving upper-class sounds and ardently symbolic lyrics!
The interview published on Vox Empirea gives to the reader any biographical information regarding the Italian project Donamorte, while this analysis about their debut-album suggestively entitled “Gemini” will highlight the reasons for which the trio is considered one of the most accredited promises from the emerging national underground music scene. The sound genre belonging to the band is a mixture of retro/new wave, electronic, rock and gothic, exhibited with elegance and professionalism by Armand Donamorte (vox), Garmo (vox/keys/progs) and Kaos K (guitars) in an ever riveting, polychrome contest, by episodes that verge on the authentic excellence.
The full-length, published in digipak format by Space Race Records, the EK Product’s additional label, consists of twelve tracks within which particularly elaborated technological procedures together with charming vocal formulas, with dark orchestrations and with an instrumental complex studied in detail, they forge sounds emotionally capturing that will seduce a large listening audience by their penetrating charisma. The exploration of the CD leads initially to the homonymous “Gemini”, a song viewable on the web by an excellently realized video: its enthralling vocal incipt, rhythmically supported by bass-lines generated by the midtempo drum-programming, it joins to the keyboard’s nebula, creating the openness over which they develop intensly the electro-wave/rock sounds generated by synths, by incisive electric guitar grafts, and by the Armand’s singing culminating into a refrain that will resound in the memory for hours. “Can’t You Feel It”, an electro-rock track, slows down the percussive speed adding to the circular guitar’s arpeggios, to the programming hatch and to the evocative intro-voice, the symmetrical lines that will form its rhythmic pattern, all this divided into periods of quiet vocal-drum minimalism alternating with scorching guitar verticalizations played by Kaos K, further strengthened by keyboard expansion. By the dance scheme of “End Of Your Reign” it comes at first a mixture of dark-electro resonances combined with industrial-oriented arrangements, followed in their evolution by melodic new waver interactions: these modulations are build by uptempo pulses, by the Armand’s shading voice, by programming vibrations, by synthetic effects and by keyboard’s flows. Technology, experimentation and a subtle neurasthenia are perceptible in the next song, “Down Down”, whose procedures recall the alienation of the most alchemical Depeche Mode united with hazy post-rock, a sound composed by little more than hissed and depressed voice, by dissonant guitar, by a robust, slowly scanned drumming in addition to electronic impurities. “I’ll Be Dust” configures a dark-synthpopish/wave interface adorned by a solid singing phase harmoniously inserted into the mechanism of drum-machine which rhythm, scanned with slowness, is combined to the programmed transfixion and to the density of key’s apparatus that originates visionary moments. It comes “Psycho End”, an enthralling electro-rock ride propelled by midtempo drum-machine/sequenced beats, in a succession of firmly pronounced vox, keyboard’s extensions and wriggles together with the guitar’s abrasiveness, while “In The Woods”, as a radio-horror novel, it paints in the listener’s fantasy the frightening images of a nocturnal forest wrapped by mist into which, for evil prodigy, it materializes a monstrous creature that attacks its feminine victim, a choreography full of suspense, made true by a spectrally lunar soundtrack composed by fluid key expansion and by electronic drumming, within which they afterwards take shape the chilling roars of the beast, the convulsive wheezes of the race, the desperate screams of human prey: to this interlude is closely connected the subsequent “Necronomicon” which, faithfully to its own title, it spreads dark-electronics/dark-rock musicality so overwhelming, shamanic, designed by rhythmic downtempo fractionations coolly weighted by ebony coloured timbres, by programming asymmetries, leaden guitar intersections and by sybilline vocals dissolved later into a mantra. In the next “D.r.e.d.a.” we can distinguish, albeit in less evident quantities, the same dark-electro elements and the mysterious evocations that have characterized the previous two acts: the register of this song prefer the return of a danceable electro-wave/rock calligraphy, dynamized by a pneumatic-midtempo acceleration phase chased by programming, the basement on which they charmingly swirl vocals sung with a determined tone, intersecting in the refrain the bright widening keyboard and the compactness of the supporting guitar. “I Want To Escape” is a dark-electro/rock within which they vibrate the decay of gothic-style and new-wave atmospheres, acoustics dominated by the hegemony created by the combination between the magic Armand’s voice and the scratchy electric guitar, and also between the downtempo drumming and, on the refrain’s openings, the intense keyboard chords. The darkness dominates the subsequent “Accept And Understand” too, a syncopated Calvary of electronic and rock elements which effects communicate torment, anxiety, anger, all feelings that are expressed in the claustrophobic immensity of a sound rigorously hardened with by downtempo/midtempo bpm’s gushing out from the rhythm-machine, which they hurt with inhuman ruthlessness the altered Armand’s vocalizations, joining then with the powerful tension propagated by guitar. Rarely, to the final album’s track is given the role of “great Seal”: is what is happening now by the final act entitled “Charade”, a formidable electropop/wave of otherworldly beauty, which melodical strength, acceptation and nobility they don’t find sufficiently representative adjectives to be described in all their extraordinariness: the song’s pentagram was developed and executed by incomparable musical criterion, converging with maximum efficiency aestheticized voice harmonies combined with the very danceable drum-programming, which uptempo beats, the exceptional authority of refrain, the vastness of the keyboard and the angelic additional-chorus, they instantly enchain the listener enrapturing him.
Forefront-project of incalculable value, the Donamorte create music that transcends from every conceivable simplicism reserving upper-class sounds and ardently symbolic lyrics: the concept and the sounds found in this tracklist are the tangible manifestation of creativity, acumen and fertile inspiration. The album, artfully shaped by the three protagonists, is the depositary of contents that compare favorably with the best proposals from the same alternative panorama: they, however, require participation and involvement to be experienced in their fullness: if you are considering lists of new records looking for something that might surprise you, direct your investigation to “Gemini”, a release by which you walk over the depths of the Abyss and the frontiers of Heaven.