Octavia Sperati – Winter Enclosure
If you would take a minute to contemplate the greatness of The Gathering’s Mandylion, with its lush contrast of heavier, though never perplexing moments of metal color, offsetting the pure beauty of Anneke’s silver pipes; it is a genuine sound that really should have reached out to many aspiring musicians to try something a lot more passionate with their music. The all female Norwegian quintet, Octavia Sperati, have built their fledgling empire solely around the “Mandylion” formula. Even though singer Silje Wergeland does possess her own smooth delivery, she can’t help herself to dip into many phrasing techniques and tonal shifts that we’ve heard, and much better I might add, from Anneke. But for someone like myself who considers himself a starry eyed follower of The Gathering and their angelic front woman, the similarities Silje envelopes her voice in works in Octavia Sperati’s favor. Their music is pretty low key… mellow if you will, even though the bare fundaments of their sound shifts between traditional metal and more doom laden approach. Bottom line… the vocal lines carry the music since there really aren’t any “monster” riffs or overly noticeable hooks that further suck me in. “Icebound” and “Future Is” both strike me as the most developed tracks on this disc. Their powerful vocal lines accentuate some well written musical ideas that touch on a mild black metal riffing style to give O.S.’s sound an even more multi-faceted approach. More variety rather than settling for a mellow groove would really have given this album a deeper sense of creativity and memorability. As it stands, “Winter Enclosure” is a very promising debut from a band that seems to possess some rather exciting tools in their arsenal. Hopefully the magic will be more fully realized in the songwriting for their next album. For those of you who keep track of such things, “Winter Enclosure” was recorded and produced by Herbrand Larsen and Arve Isdal… both members of the ever godly Enslaved. – Marty
CANDLELIGHT
Worm Gear 