MACBETH – Malae Artes

Italian Goth Metal band Macbeth has, to be honest, released some rather hopeless albums in previous efforts, and has positioned themselves safely and solidly deep inside the very crowded and cluttered forest of uninteresting Goth bands from Middle and Southern Europe. Germany is very well represented here – as they tend to be in most bad-taste categories involving black latex and leather – but the Italians in Macbeth are a prime example of the lot.

Then the mysterious thing happens – Malae Artes arrives in the mailbox and shows that the band still suffers from below-par production, still features very average vocals (especially the male ones – a very typical aspect with bands in this musical category), still hasn’t taken any kind of step towards any form of originality, neither from a sound nor image perspective. Those traits aside, the album sounds cool – at times very cool, and at other times very uncool. The music is not in any way original, and if you’re in a perfectionist mood, there’s still lots of work to be done here, but there’s a certain freshness, a certain spark or flair deep inside the package that makes the album stand forth and sound good… plain and simple.

After a short intro, “Lifelong Hope” opens the ball in an okay way. Up-tempo and with an epic chorus, this track is decent enough, but not a highlight. “My Desdemona” never manages to lift the roof completely, so it isn’t until “Miss Murderess” at track number 4 that the album really kicks off. This catchy little ditty shows everything that’s good with this album – un-polished, un-original but still charming as hell.

This definitely goes too for the Sarah Brighman cover “How Can Heaven Love Me.” It’s a cool (in a nostalgic way) wah-wah guitar line over the most worn-out chord progression in the history of music sets, and this three-minute ditty is actually among the highlights of the album. A big plus for some truly tragically theatrical male vocals courtesy of singer Andreas (this is potential cult material!).

Every Goth band with even the faintest of dignity has to attempt the “quasi-orchestral and extreeemely scaaary orchestra intro” at least once, and “Good Mourning” is Macbeth’s take. Write down a chord progression of your choice from your buddy’s old Dimmu Borgir demo tapes, play it on your $100 Casio keyboard and there you go. In this context, it sounds cool though, especially with even more tearful vocals and female singer (or eventually “cruel tempting siren” as they call her) Morena even contributes some spoken vocals in the background just to make sure things get really ghoulish.

The ballad “Henceforth” isn’t too impressive – actually it’s not impressive at all – and “Down-hearted” has very little to offer except for some truly legendary use of the volume knob on the mixing desk. In an attempt to create dynamics, the unnamed producer does some manic tweaks during the verses, which unfortunately makes things sound more funny than dramatic. The rather sloppy impression of the last few tracks is luckily, for the most part, made up for by the closing track “Dead and Gone.” Again, this is on the more Symphonic side, but the keyboards sound better this time around. The chorus isn’t very impressive, but otherwise this is a cool track, with a good and bombastic arrangement. The female vocals in the verses SHOULD be resung, though, as they are so far out of tune that it’s nothing short of a mystery how the producer could ignore them.

Although this review has been maybe a tad on the pessimistic side, this album definitely has something to offer. The band is comprised of decent musicians (except for some very “jazzy” vocals …) – especially guitarists Max and Luca impress with some cool solos here and there… solos that are on a much higher level than usually found inside this genre. The rhythm section of bassist Sem and drummer Fabrizio is also solid enough. The songs are never revolutionary, but, for the most part, they are saved by that certain charm described earlier, and fans of simple, straight-forward Gothic Metal should definitely check this out.