CLASSICA

Classica is the third full-length studio album by Italian Goth/Doom/death metal artist Novembre. I haven´t been very impressed with the first two releases from the band and I can´t say that Classica changes my view on the band much.

The music on Classica is melodic Goth/Doom/death metal with both growling and clean vocals. If you know the Swedish band Katatonia think of how they would sound if they had released an album between Brave Murder Day (1996) and Discouraged Ones (1998) and you´re just about there. Unfortunately Novembre doesn´t get anywhere near the high quality in Katatonia´s music IMO. The strangely busy and not too tight drumming from Giuseppe Orlando is still a problem for me and the clean vocals from Carmelo Orlando are way back in the mix and sound like mumbling. I can´t make out a single word. Not all is bad on the album and I actually enjoy the melodic slow to mid paced music even though it´s not remarkable in any way.

The musicianship is other than the strange drumming and mumbling clean vocals pretty good.

The production is well crafted except for the clean vocals which are way too low in the mix. Maybe to disguise the Italian accent?

Classica is not an album that holds up well compared to other albums in the genre and I would listen to any Katatonia album before this. I´ve mentioned Katatonia a lot in this review and it´s because Novembre sounds a lot like that band. Novembre unfortunately lacks just about everything that makes Katatonia such a great band and a leader in the genre. Classica is not worth more than a 2 star rating from me. I hope they improve on later recordings.