Arte Novecento

‘Arte Novecento’ is another hit-or-miss record from the prolific Italians, Novembre. Like any treasured storybook, be it fiction or non-fiction, there has to be a strong beginning, middle and an end. ‘Arte Novecento’ is like a story that begins with little promise, shows signs of improvement by the middle, where the plot thickens, but by the end, the plot has fallen to its knees, beaten and broken as it slowly pinpoints the meaninglessness of the plot. This band had a brief stint as a death metal act in the early 1990’s, a few years after this record was released and that may hint at some sort of conclusion as to why the bands material has an overcast and overshadowed sound. The band seem to suffer from those early influences that can only take their disjointed sound so far. Again, the problems with this record lie solely at the feet of the impractical production. On the debut, Novembre’s problem was that the production gave the bass little room for involvement, being left in the shadows to ponder the meaning of its existence, and didn’t allow the percussion to show any signs of productivity or inspiration. To me, this record is like a game of tennis. The finer points to this record are batted back and forth, into the light and then into the shadows. The stronger and more accessible sides to Novembre are closed down like a hungry player, professionally displaying his, or her athleticism by returning the finer elements with poor returns. The gothic elements of this record are restricted by the death/doom take.

The description of the band on Metal Archives states that Novembre do incorporate death metal into their music and, to me, this is the beginnings of that. ‘Arte Novecento’ slowly establishes a death metal influence on the percussion, with its heavy-handed use of double bass. This inclusion, which was uninspired on the debut, isn’t living up to its potential. The drummer, Giuseppe Orlando, is being too forceful with his instrument. He likes to make his presence felt by using death metal inspired blasts, but they don’t sit well against the accomplished acoustics, or the clean vocals which dominate proceedings. The debut would have been a more sufficient era for the robust double bass to have left its mark, since the record used more distortion on guitars and harsher vocals, on occasions. Carmelo Orlando, who’s performance was the main highlight of the debut, has been shirked off by the poor production this time around. His vocals sound nasal and reduced in emotion. On occasions, with songs like ‘Worn Carillon’ and ‘A Memory’, his vocals can produce heart warming heroics as he once again assumes control by emphasising the emotion in his voice with powerful repetitions of lyrics and tones. His vocals flow well on the aforementioned songs and hit a particular high spot on ‘Will’, which features some glorious electric acoustics alongside an open performance by Carmelo, who is pouring his heart and sole into his music. His performance alone cannot save the day though. His vocals shift, more so than ever before, from professional to amateur, from emotive to nasal. The epitome of dynamism that was Carmelo Orlando has become the epitome of what is wrong about the production. His vocals are confined by the darkness of the production. Given a lighter, more atmospheric base to work from, the vocals might have sounded fine.

Here in lies the problem - the production fixates itself on enhancing the bass and the double bass, as oppose to highlighting all instrumentation and warmly fusing it all together. On the debut, the production did almost the exact opposite. Extracting the emotion from the bass and the aggression from the double bass, which is overpowering on this piece. The dense and restrictive production doesn’t fit with the emotional stance the band wish to serve to their audience as the main meal. The emotional vulnerability about Novembre becomes something I enjoy on latter records. The way in which Novembre openly discuss their troubles through their music is important to the listener as it draws them closer to accepting and understanding the meaning behind the music. However, though this happens on the odd occasion, the light airy sound displayed by certain instruments doesn’t match the hardened guitars, which are unusually unresponsive. The guitars don’t play a major role in signifying what is and what isn’t good about Novembre, they’re simply just there, floating aimlessly like an asteroid through the vastness of space and eternity. I was disappointed with the guitars when I first heard this record and I still am, several years later. They offer too many contrasting and varied sounds for my liking. There is no one shape to the songs, in terms of the guitars. Thankfully, these problems were later sorted out after numerous line-up changes. The problems of the first record, in terms of the band playing as one, are still consistent throughout ‘Arte Novecento’. The one major difference between this and ‘Wish I Could Dream It Again…’ is the simple fact that the material present here is better, healthier and constructed in a more user-friendly way. This record truly is confusing. Perhaps not as confusing as this review, since I’ve gone back and forth, from positive to negative and back again. The record doesn’t allow for an easy review. Disjointed, but not beaten.

Novembre's 1996 effort "Arte Novencento" is the second album written by the young Orlando brothers, and predecessor to the widely hailed Italian doom masterpiece "Classica"....but is it worth your time?

Well, compared to their first release, "Wish I Could Dream It Again", we see that songs still retain the dreamy doom sound that they borrowed from other European bands at the time (notably Katatonia and Anathema) but shift the focus from guitar driven melancholy to an upbeat floating sound that completely absorbs the listener.

The shred like solos from songs like Seagull In the Sky, and Novembre are all but gone, but the boys from Italy really shine through with their creative song structure and great layering. The album's production should also be noted, as the guitars have an immense amount of reverb, and seem to drift along in the song as Guisseppe beats out some fierce drum lines and Alexandario conjures some masterful bass lines on his fretless bass guitar.

The album starts with a nice rain sample, and moves into a slow guitar dirge that sets a rough tone to start the album, but moves into the beautiful track "Homecoming". The album continues on with a tear drenched guitar track that has great build and climax, and moves into an unexpected Depeche Mode cover of "Stripped", which is an alright track, but one we could maybe do without. "Worn Carrilon" throws us back into the upbeat sound, with great rythym and a soaring lead melody as Carmello showcases a great vocal performance. At this point, the album takes a slower and darker cue and incorporates more classical guitars and creates an atmosphere akin to standing alone in a dark room.

So overall, I feel the album has stronger atmosphere and song structure than Classica, and flows better as well. Some may be put off by Carmello (singer) being very hard to hear in the mix, and the dreamy almost poppy sound of some of the songs. A good, although rare, buy.

This is the Novembre album that has my favorite song by them. "Nursery Rhyme", has this great moody harmony, my ideal perfect song. It's very dark and epic with the acoustic guitar being my favorite part of the song. Not only this does have my favorite song by them but it also has the most funny song they ever did. Track 4, Stripped, is a love song about sex with hilarious lyrics, I don't think that humorous aspect was intetional. Stripped is the worst song I've heard by Novembre, the one thing I hate about the album.Track 8, Photograph, has a little taste of 80's charm, kind of sounds like a Cure song. I enjoy that song. All the other songs are just really good gloomy doom metal similar to the likes of Katatonia and at times could sound like ballady hard rock similar to Sentenced in their "Cold White Light" album.

This is metal with clean vocals instead of deep growls. There are some of those death metal vocals present in some of their other albums but you don't hear it all on this one, the beautiful cleaner singing is all I hear. I like this album, it's easy listening for metalheads, rich atmospheric music. Novembre is one of my favorite bands becuase I'm more into the melodic metal like Sentenced, Katatonia, Agalloch, and Opeth.