Piah Mater – The Wandering Daughter

Band: Piah Mater
Title: The Wandering Daughter
Label: Code666 Records
Release date: 05 October 2018
Country: Brazil
Format reviewed: Digital promo

Piah Mater is Brazilian band coming from Rio De Janeiro, representing the prolific scene of the country and delivering quite impressive quality of tunes in their compositions. Started in 2010 and releasing their debut album “Memories of Inexistence” in 2014, now the trio – Luis (vocals and gutars), Igor (guitar) and Kalki (drums), are bringing us their new sound opus “The Wandering Daughter”.

With six tracks and total running time of 56 minutes, the album is hardly to be described in short. The tracks are long (except the introduction Hyster), and they include really impressive quantity of elements, starting from aggressive death metal parts with growling vocals, through typical progressive rock musicianship with clear vocals, keyboards background and uneven structures, reaching eerie melancholic passages transforming into atmospheric black metal. This is a constant change in their songs and it will never leave the listener a second of boredom (or not?), but vice versa – the album must be listened many many times until discovering most the progressiveness and everything it could reveal. It is like a fruit with so many skins and tastes, so that with every peal off comes another layer to be explored. Pretentiousness? No I wouldn’t think of this at all.

The enormous ground of various soundscapes and elements, guitar solos, melodies, change in tempo, and excellent performances, make “The Wandering Daughter” difficult to analyse and dissect. The fans could find a lot of Opeth (both eras), Dream Theatre, Anathema, Porcupine Tree, Katatonia, just to give some initial direction for what Piah Mater do. On top the band adds own read of the contemporary progressiveness.

“Solace in Oblivion”, “Sprung from Weakness”, “The Sky is Our Shelter”, “Earthbound Ruins” and the closing “The Meek’s Inheritance” (my favourite) should be listened to in special mood for huge dose of progressive diversity. Which sometimes is hard to swallow. The tracks create massive uniqueness of whole atmosphere of the album, which I just accepted as one whole piece. I really enjoyed the most those sad, dreamy slowly parts, creating autumn melancholy. Enjoying the least – the most progressive elements, as I’m really not a fan of Dream Theatre. That said I do believe everyone should discover these so many faces of “The Wandering Daughter” alone. Understanding the search for ultra quality in the compositions, for me personally the overall master musicianship and diversity here prevailed over the pure enjoyment.  7.5/10 Count Vlad

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