Review by Chris Georgiou - www.thetempleofmetal.gr
This album comes from our neighbor Italy and as our friend Matteo Bosi writes it is his first solo project. To speak the truth, I personally don’t take kindly to one man bands (Bathory or Quorthon is an exception of course!!) and I was prepared for the ultimate boredom. Fortunately, result is more than interesting!!
I fulfill Mateo’s wish to read the story in the booklet before the Soundtrack’s listening. Well, here we are in the beginning of the 14th century and deal with a concept album. It relates the story of a man called Erik, his revenge of his wife’s murder, after a thief’s attack on their village and his final attempt to bring Virginia back to life. I’m sorry, but I found it rather naive, but this isn’t our point. The point is that Mateo and his Alchemy of Life manage to cover musically this subject in quite success, even though it is a fact that the will to enable a concept story to transform into musical notes isn’t the easiest thing on earth! Alchemy of Life performs mostly instrumental music (entirely recorded on PC with professional hardware) and this album’s title "Soundtrack A.D. 1312" express sufficiently the bands’ musical direction. It is a soundtrack based on medieval and renaissance music, where instruments such as horns, flutes, harps, lutes, piano, acoustic guitars and tympani set plus many others, meet with traditional metal (or rock if you wish) instruments, creating a fascinating result. The subject here is the right use of orchestration and Matteo seems to be well informed. The unfamiliar at first sight connection between orchestral music of 14th to 17th century and heavy metal here turns to be feasible. However, Alchemy of Life isn’t the first band that moves in these musical fields, but what they attempt, perform it well. The album in it’s happy times reminds me much of Rhapsody, but fortunately (yes, I’m not a fan of them!) contains a music variety difficult to define. During the album the turn from feelings of joy to those grief is quite often, keeping this way the interesting of the listener almost (indeed sometimes quality seem to falter) unceasing. Influences here varies from Savatage, Saviour Machine, up to more doomy listenings related to My Dying Bride, Paradise Lost or Morgion or Dead Can Dance, Ataraxia and a touch of Sopor Aeternus. Conclusively, "Soundtrack A.D. 1312" is an honest album, full of interesting ideas that shows a promising and creative future for the band.Back to the reviews
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