Review: THEATRES DES VAMPIRES “Candyland”

THEATRES DES VAMPIRES “Candyland”
Scarlet Records

This band has its roots from late 80’s. The fact is that they changed the name from SEPULCRUM to VII ARCANO after “Promo’94” and shortly after that band left two members who found THEATRES DES VAMPIRES. But the fact is that this last one is, or better to say: was (I’ll explain it a little later), continuation of SEPULCRUM in some way. Anyway, the place of origin for these three guys and one girl is The Eternal City. As we all know it’s the oldest (used first time by Roman poet Tibulius in first century before Nazarene) and the most well-known nickname of Italy’s capital.

As I know band changed music style even more often than names. They began as SEPULCRUM from Doom/Death, then was Death/Thrash (episode of VII ARCANO), Melodic Black Metal, Gothic Metal/Deathrock and finally Industrial/Electronic Gothic Metal (these last terms sound for me at least strange and in the last one I see logic contradiction – I know, I’m old orthodox). However, in this last change didn’t participate any of members who was founding the band. Lord Vampyr (Alessandro Nunziati – vocals, guitars since 1994 to 1997) left the band in 2004 and Count Morgoth (Roberto Cufaro – keyboards in 1996 and guitars since 2002 to 2006) did it two years later. By the way, now on “Candyland” they changed their style again. I mean, there’s still some of electronic here, in “Photographic” there’s practically only that in first part of the song (later guitar play important role here), but it’s a cover of absolutely non-Metal band.

Anyway, in general lading actor here is guitar. Riffs are… Well, there’s surely something predatory in them – at least in most of them. They don’t change very often during individual songs and aren’t complicated. But I think that it’s because of music’s character. But there’re some more melodic ones, too. Drums plays also not so various, even if there’re some passages of course. Sometimes we can also hear clearly bass, but it happens rarely. Generally everything’s rather in slow tempo, from time to time in slow-middle. And in the end I’ll write something about vocal. This is clean female one. Mostly there’s also, the same as in case of riffs, something predatory in that. In some fragments it’s a little psychedelic, too. Mostly it’s just vocal which make music melodic.

To sum it up Sonya (Scarlet – vocals), Zimon (Lijoi – bass, back. vocals), Gabriel (Valerio – drums, back vocals) and Giorgio (Farrante – guitars) make good job here. Contrary to the title album, it isn’t as sweet as candy. It’s melodic, with quite a lot of keyboards and so on, but there’s something dark in its way here. Oh… first song, “Morgana Effect, reminds me some German band which’s name is the same as of the biggest base of American army in this country. It’s more variable, with something that we can call by solo, but, however, it’s surely not for true-blue fans of Death, Black or Thrash Metal. But if someone is open-minded (even if is old orthodox as I’m) it’ll be nice to listen to “Candyland” sometimes.

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