Marching Upon Forgotten Ashes (Self Released)   This band comes from Italy and plays a furious, dark and original fast Black Metal with a great vocal work that ranges (and mixes) from clean voices, screams, high pitched shrieks, and some spoken parts, that gives some narrative to their music, the lyrics are poetical, dark and twisted, based on black emotions and transcendental anguish. The drumming is amazingly fast and technical with high speed blast beats, double bass drums and brakes that will take your breath away. The guitars are high tuned, strident, played (mostly) at full speed, but permeable enough to don’t muddy the other instrument’s sounds. There’s a lot of ad-hoc effect during the album, like strange guitars and vocals effects, bombs sounds, etc. I must said I haven’t hear something like this before, even though it’s some kind of “avant-garde” Black Metal isn’t in the progressive way, there are not “virtuous” guitars, fantastic keyboard, or even a remote Heavy Metal melody, here the guitars handles all the dark, furious melodies, and the drums (and bass) adds an almost martial feeling. There are some introspective, melancholic, sad parts balanced with the angry, gloomy ones. The album art is abstractly beautiful; there are some oniric (nightmarish) images of a dark tunnel (a passage to the “other” life?). The production is not the finest, it is a little weak and thin sounding in contrast with the powerful music, but that’s OK (hey! is their self released debut album!) At last a really original band shows up! don’t misunderstand me, this band is Black Metal, is aggressive, is really dark, is not happy, is not progressive… but it’s really different from any Black Metal band you have heard before… (fuck! How can explain that...) Just get the fucking album and will know what I’m talking about… (AP)