TALES BETWEEN REALITY AND MADNESS

"Tales Between Reality and Madness" is the debut full-length studio album by Italian, Ravenna, Emilia-Romagna based sludge/stoner metal act Void of Sleep. The album was released through Aural Music in January 2013. Void of Sleep was formed in 2010 and their only release before "Tales Between Reality and Madness" is the "Giants and Killers (2011)" promo EP.

The music on "Tales Between Reality and Madness" is heavy and quite varied sludge/stoner metal. Stylistically it´s a combination of Black Sabbath influenced stoner doom and Mastodon´s more simple and melodic sludgy material. There´s a slight psychadelic edge to the music too, which provides it with additional flavor. There´s also a slight hardcore edge to the music, which as an example can be heard when the band use bully/riot gang choirs. Frontman/guitarist Burdo has a strong voice and is able to sing both clean and more raw type distorted vocals. He is actually a really skilled singer and a great asset to the band´s sound. The songwriting is of good quality too and add to that a powerful and well sounding production and "Tales Between Reality and Madness" definitely comes off as a quality debut studio album release by Void of Sleep.

It can be argued that the music on the album isn´t wildly original, but when it´s as well played and well written, as it´s the case on "Tales Between Reality and Madness", the lack of a completely unique sound is of little importance. "Tales Between Reality and Madness" is overall a great quality album deserving a 3.5 star (70%) rating.