MARBLE are back! The melodic metal band from north Italy have released their new opera, the following to 2008 “A.t.G.o.d.” (Y Records/Warner) and the 2010 self titled EP. The new album “S.A.V.E.”, presents a lyrical connection between the songs, focused on the three theological virtues and the seven deadly sins. The new members, Eleonora Travaglino on vocals and Norman Ceriotti (Defamed, Roll for Initiative) along with founders Paul Beretta, Omar Gornati on guitars, Daniel Fleba on bass and Jacopo Marchesi on keyboards, have blended both melody and aggressiveness into a mix of melodic choruses, heavy guitar, technical rhythms and keyboard harmonies.
The song “Mine” won an online contest with Swedish death metal guitar master Marko Tervonen (The Crown), and has been mixed and mastered by him, while the whole album has been produced by Giulio Capone (Moonlight Haze, ex Temperance, Bejelit). The Artwork for “S.A.V.E.” was created by the great Finnish artist Jan Yrlund of Darkgrove.net.
Mine is a dynamic start to a flourishing record, which wastes no time in delivering pure rock energy, with the shredding guitar paired with the clear vocals providing an attitude filled cathartic release where the drums at the final third provide a break to such a huge sounding opener. Following with ‘Heartless Disease’, everything but the drums feels as if it’s been stripped away into something new and something of a standout track, there’s a curious choice of a solo in the two minute mark which sounds different to anything I’ve heard in the last few years as well. It goes pretty deep with their hooks and will no doubt pay off in the longer term.
Moving into the much harder and heavier territory, ’30 Silver Coins’ is a much more streamlined track which steals the show. It’s playful and a much more entertaining release from a genre perspective which gives relief in retrospect to the previous track whereas ‘My Mask Collection’ is more of an ear worm in the respect it will just infect your mind in the best way. The same goes for ‘What Leads Us To’ which is just an utterly fantastic and unapologetic nearly six minutes of masterful riffs and rhythm which they brefiely touch on earlier in the record, especially with the rifftastic section late in the track, it’s one track that needs to be on a playlist to air guitar to!
Heading into ‘To feed the worms’ this just feels wholly out of place musically, out of tune with he rest of the record to start with but it develops into something quite unaligned and untuned but when it comes to ‘A Darker Shade of Me’, this is just a dark acoustic track which turns the record on it’s head and spins it into a completely different direction to anything we’ve been given from the band previously in this release. It’s a dark take which is just so entertaining.
‘Where Is The Light’ just shows there is more consistency in the record than we’ve been let on which is another burst of energy and more on the experimental side of things for the record. This feeds directly into ‘Timelines’ which is just a drum heavy track but on a larger scale, with it leading better into one another. Again, this feeds into their penultimate track, ‘Daymare Town’ but that beginning strikes me as a little strange which is a result of them being a little experimental and I appreciate that, they’re trying to brake out of what they’re doing and that shredding is just again a masterful attempt to showcase how well their music can be.
The finale is a perfect starting slower start which bridges with something out of a dark 90’s rock outfit but on the other hand feels as it could be more or an interlude track to wind down to after the musically mad riffs we’ve been given.
Overall, this is a very mixed record for one that was formed based off the seven deadly sins. It is a fun focus on what we’ve been hearing as of late and it’ll be interesting to see more different approaches from this band in the future where there’s no denying that their harmonies are some of the best around.
Rating:3/5.
Orders for the record are available via the following link.
Almost Anything Music 