Theatrum Mentis
'Evil Illusion'
(Nocturnal Brights Productions)
MARK: 78/100
"Death of Mind" begins in a funereal manner, with death bell tolls, demoniac bass sounds and gusts of wind not promising anything good; then comes an acute keyboard line, halfway between melancholy and madness.
Frightful and ultra-deep basses, morbid sounds with a macabre Noise background. The backdrop grows blacker and blacker, until a few romantic piano lines are dedicated to the passed away protagonist's beloved ones. Suddenly a maelstrom of negativity gets open, grinding all it finds on its way, unstoppable and merciless. "Emptiness" 's hell on earth come to devour our souls. A formidable track where a woe prevails and takes everybody over; the descent into the depths of the nether regions goes on and "The Passage" is the accompaniment to both Dante's and the one on earth of someone prisoner of fears, anxiety, mental and spiritual degenerations. You shall shit your pants, guaranteed!
In "The Arrival" are some voices, but they are some demon's or poltergeist's, or probably voices in the victim's mind; what's sure is that a gleam of hope comes for the first time only with "A New State of Mind", a composition created to relax and meditate; an ethereal and even celestial moment, a dream or an illusion, represented by a helping hand turning all that is pitch-black to something totally positive. Avulsed from the rest of the album, here we get out of the limbo, ejected into a new dimension, "Lament", a tunnel full of echoes, headstrong or creeping guitar insertions and final electronic drum beats. Are we living a near-death experience fighting with treacherous claws from false angels trying to bring us to a place where we'll never return from?
Everything that "Illusions" is able to convey the listener's soul is pure iniquity; this diabolic slab of wickedness would be deign of appearing as soundtrack of a Lucio Fulci's flick, were he still with us...The disquieting bass, the voices of the spirits passing through our bodies, the drum machine increasing the tension and the carillon in contrast with the rest render this piece only worth the buying of the whole CD.
Whilst "Sadness" touches us over its mourningful edge, spangled by lonely reflection instants in a hard autumn rain, "Point of No Return" seems a Doom track played by a group of lobotomized serial killers who were given musical instruments after sedatives, locked up in a musty nuthouse in the suburbs.
Finally, "Madness" concludes the path with fast shots and cemeterial keyboards; additional voices loom up and sanity recommends a stampede, if only it were useful; abruptly the album ends!
Theatrum Mentis is a collection of nightmares and mind deformations destined to haunt you for the years to come. Sometimes the worst is around the place we live in, sometimes it pollutes our mind; either way the only escape is death...
Line-up on this record:
Fabrizio Pavia - music and arrangements
Contacts:
Rome - Italy
Official site:
http://www.myspace.com/theatrummentis
Demo-/Disco-graphy:
-Evil Illusion (CD - 2009)
