Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Atmosphere is important when life holds the opportunity to hear a version of majesty that comes from a language other than your own. Grandeur is always welcome, but it should always be presented in such a way that it holds sincerity, not just a flash of inspiration dressed in the clothes of modesty, but full on application of audible prosperity, it should leave the listener with an impression of explosions at the edge of the stratosphere and the feeling of energy at is heart.
Many will dismiss the Doom Metal genre as one of naked aggression, one that does not exemplify the beating heart of a pure ridden soul, and yet underneath its direct, no-nonsense voice, it offers perhaps more to the memory of a time of the operatic and the grand saga than to the musical and the lighter touch of the stage and its continual buoyant resonance.
To this end Italian mood enhancers DVM Spiro have produced an album of such intensity that it’s own soul has enlarged, it has found a way to cut through the decimation of the age and offer insight into what awaits, like a prophecy from the greatest of sages, its expectation is honourable and decisive, it is swift, and unafraid of the gutter as it actually touches the stars, and in MMXXVI-Grave, the sense of drama is astonishing and complete.
The sheer length of the main tracks underlines the beauty of the operatic, it is almost if the grave itself has found a voice and keeps the musicianship intact, underpinned with grace and bookended with its own overture and hailing to the other side of mortal existence.
Across the tracks, and their approximate translations, Indistinta Morte (Indistinct Death), Dissentimento (Disagreement), the incredible Troppo Lente Scendono Le Tue Lacrime (Your Tears Fall Too Slowly), and Insoluto D’Anima (Unpaid Soul), MMXXVI-Grave becomes more than just a regard of the genre, it plugs it into the main renewable energy source in Italy and gorge itself on the output available.
Atmospheric, climaxing as the greatest of operas would with a bang and never a solitude of whispers, DVM Spiro have produced a deep growl and truly inspiring feminine voice to its sheer summit with class and fixated drama; an album many will be thankful they bought to life.
Ian D. Hall