First Black Pope – Post Mortem (CD Album – Advoxya)
Genre/Influences: Dark-electro, industrial-metal.
Background/Info: The Italian combo First Black Pope is clearly not the most renowned band active in the wider fields of dark-electronic music and yet I’ve always been seduced by this formation. “Post Mortem” is the third full length of the band, which was already released several months ago now.
Content: “Post Mortem” became a heavy and merciless fusion between quite typical dark-electro music and heavy guitar riffs. The haunting electronic style for some of the leads might remind you of Suicide Commando and to Leather Strip for some of its sequences. The empowering guitar playing clearly injects an industrial-metal flavor, which makes the characteristic of this band, but not from the music genre. The vocals are somewhere in between rage and a ghost-like expression.
+ + + : “Post Mortem” is a violent production, which will appeal for dark-electro freaks, and also to a ‘harder’ audience listening to bands such as Freakangel, Seraphim System and related bands. The sound is not innovating although First Black Pope has something on their own. I like the power running through the work, which is sometimes accentuated by a few epic arrangements.
– – – : The only –and important element from the album I was a bit disappointed with is the mixing. The sound is pretty compressed and has a dirty production. This album is maybe missing an ‘absolute’ hit, but globally speaking this is a great tracklist.
Conclusion: If you don’t know yet First Black Pope, I can only, but recommend you to put your hand on this work to discover the ultra-violent work of this formation.
Best songs: “Collector”, “Human Sacrifice”, “Fallen Star”, “I Invoke”.
Rate: (7½).
Artist: www.facebook.com/FIRSTBLACKPOPE
Label: www.advoxya–records.com / www.facebook.com/pages/Advoxya–Records/265765706059
Support Side-Line
More people read Side-Line than ever, and there is still no paywall and no advertising. Readers pay for it instead - from $5 a month.
Why we ask
Advertising revenues across the media are falling fast. Unlike many news organisations we have not put up a paywall, and we refuse to add annoying advertising, so we need to ask for your help. Side-Line’s independent journalism takes time, money and hard work to produce, and we do it to push the artists we like, who are equally fighting to survive.
Handled by PayPal.
I have been working for over 30 years with Side-line as the main reviewer. My taste is eclectic, uncoventional and I prefer to look for the pearls, even if the bands are completely unknown, thus staying loyal to the Side-Line philosophy of nurturing new talents.
