WISH I COULD DREAM IT AGAIN...

Hey...wait a minute...isn't it THAT Novermbre?

I used to be a die-hard DOOM-metal fan and still like the genre (though not the same way wildly) and remember a band NOVEMBRE - rather average and not enough Doomy for me. I was surprised even more when I saw them here, on PROG-Archives. I dusted my NOVEMBRE collection few days ago to re-listen to them. This is my first, but not the last review.

OK, first of all, this is ROUGHLY and BADLY recorded. Nice growling, but hardly bearable clear voice. Numerous timing/tempo changes, but it won't make them Proggier, you know. They are not enough Doomy (at least on that album) and surely are not Prog. They are not bad, but recommended mostly for Metalheads, who are deeply in love with sore underground sound and undeveloped (honestly) demo-like material. Not recommended in general.

Wish I Could Dream it Again... is the debut album from Italian Doom/ death/ experimental rock band Novembre. I was personally introduced to Novembre seing them live as support to Katatonia on their The Great Cold Distance tour. I can´t say I was too impressed and it was with mixed feelings I appoached this album. I must say that I was both positively and negatively surprised. This album has great moments but also some really weak ones.

Novembre are very influenced by the Swedish doom/ death band Katatonia and especially the debut album from that band called Dance of December Souls which is a doom/ death classic. In addition to this style of music there are also melodic black metal tendencies on Wish I Could Dream it Again.... We´re not talking raw primitive black metal like Mayhem, Darkthrone or Gorgoroth but the more melodic variant. Novembre is generally a very melodic band and especially the guitars and the keyboards are very pleasant. The clean singing from Carmelo Orlando reminds me a bit about Darren White from Anathema but Carmelo´s raspy growls are definitely black metal inspired.

The drumming from Giuseppe Orlando is absolutely terrible. It´s seldom that I´ve heard such untight and clumsy drumming on a metal album and once again I´m reminded of Katatonia´s Dance of December Souls which likewise had terrible drumming. It´s obvious to hear that Giuseppe Orlando has many good ideas but his skills unfortunately don´t match.

Most songs have both dreaming experimental rock parts and doomy melodic death/ black parts. But the tempo is also really fastpaced a couple of times on the album which is a real treat for the diversity.

The musicinship is definitely the weak spot on this album. The musicians simply seem imature and not very skilled. It´s a bit of a shame as the music has so many good ideas that it had deserved a better destiny.

The production is not very good, but it depends on what kind of parts are played. When the dreamy keyboard/ guitar parts are played I think it sounds pretty good, but then when the more metal like parts kick in the album comes out looking pretty weak in the sound quality department.

The cover art suits the dreamy melancholic music well.

The music on Wish I Could Dream it Again... is worth a 3 star rating but because of the bad production and the even worse drum playing I´ll have to go for a 2 star rating of the album. It shows a lot of promise though and I´m looking forward to reviewing the rest of Novembre´s discography.