Nova – Vermiano Dal Cielo

Band: Nova
Title: Veniamo Dal Cielo
Label: Aeternitas Tenebrarum Musicae Fundamentum
Release date: 13 December 2019
Country: Italy
Format reviewed: Digital Promo

Boy that was a lot of vowels. And together a lot of vowels create the Italian band NOVA and their album “Veniamo Dal Cielo”. The nine-track album released on the 13th this month is the third in line for the band since 2014 filled with black metal and even more vowels.

The genre however does not spring out during the intro of the first track “Durezza a Ascetismo”. Bassy and dark intro is followed up by a surprisingly happy type of vocals. It’s not as dark and gloomy as they tend to be in back metal, as well as it’s more groovy than usual. There is a repetitive change in the track throughout and often feels a little out of place, and the production is rather a low key. Although the performance isn’t bad the production isn’t doing it any favor either, rendering the sound rather strange and gritty.

The clean guitar makes a change with “In Lotta Elevata” but it isn’t long until we are back to the previous blast beat. The same jumps between timings as before make me wonder what exactly they are going for if not trying to create something new and different, but it causes the listener to have a rather hard time finding the beat of the track. The thought did cross my mind that perhaps with better production this band could do great things, as the performance is at times impressive such as in “Fregata Covadonga”.

The intros are frequented with spoken words, which has become an iconic theme with bands such as Rotting Christ but in this musical case I would rather say NILE because of the fast pace and ever changing paces and rhythms, however, bands like NILE keeps things interesting and put in the whole mythical Egyptian thing on top of the music style but with NOVA I can’t exactly put my finger on the theme. This setup without a theme barely makes sense and it’s not enough to just pile on the inspirations of all the different bands like Iron Maiden for one second and the next one its FINNTROLL before moving onto more generic American radio rock band for a couple of more seconds and then back to technical metal ala Nile. There is a bit too much going on and my thought is don’t bite off more than you can chew.

The theme becomes even more unclear with “Dio Del Ghiaccio e Del Lampo” as the different instruments appear to play different genres. And it isn’t really cleared up either in the closing track of “Trovare Chiuso”. Of course, this album is to one and each own and my surprise levels will not rise if I hear someone praising this album. It was a struggle to find the beat of each track, the theme and the real aim point they were going for, but I also believe that the production wasn’t doing them any favors. The performance these guys put up is impressive, and I think that can get them quite far. 5/10 Julia

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5/10 Floating in the sea of mediocrity
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