(((((OPENmind/SATURATEDbrain))))): AMIA VERNERA LANDSCAPE

Friday, 30 September 2022

AMIA VERNERA LANDSCAPE

Band: AMIA VERNERA LANDSCAPE
Genres: Punk / Post-Rock / Hardcore / Post-Hardcore / Post-Metal / Metal / Metalcore / Metallic Hardcore / Math Metal / Doom / Ambient

Related artists: Organ and The Secret.
Country: Vittorio Veneto ITALY
Years Active: 2009-2016
For fans of: Life In Your Way, Isis, Downfall Of Gaia, Amber, Mahumodo, Rinoa, Titan, Buried Inside, Hopesfall, Pelican and Devil Sold His Soul.

Label(s): Self Released

AMIA VERNERA LANDSCAPE is a bit of a sad story. It was told to me by Sammy of Warren Of Ohms on this podcast and I've been headbanging whilst weeping since. Here it is. Band recorded 3-song demo EP and released it. Band recorded more songs and compiled the EP and the new songs to create an LP and released it. Band records a new LP. Band never releases said new LP.

So my little review will center around the LP 'The Long Procession' as the songs from the EP weren't even re-recorded as far as I can tell and the two tracks from the unreleased LP that are readily available. What's that shit sound like? It's like a clash of armies followed by solemn introspection and beautiful hymns. A war and the aftermath, happening simultaneously, equally gorgeous and terrifying. Oh, you want some band comparisons and not some literary device? Okay, it sounds like a mixture of Isis, Life In Your Way, Devil Sold His Soul, and AmenRa.

The album opens with "Empire", the fastest, most intense jam with minimal clean vocals and a longer track time of 7:25. There's a bit of an AmenRa feel with the spacey, ghoulish, instrumental mid-section, and the general ridiculousness of the heavier/mathier bits remind me of Between The Buried And Me. P.S. nice piano outro.

I wanna skip ahead to "Nichòlas" now, as it's my ultimate all-around AMIA VENERA LANDSCAPE jam (despite also being housed on the EP) and is the perfect encapsulation of everything the band was capable of when firing on all cylinders. The crushing opening is followed by an introspective midsection, all of which is of decent caliber, but then - holy shit, and then the clean vocals kick in "Mordecai" style and fucking steal the show. This ascent, the vocal melodies and harmonizing all send me into feverish chills and floor-jaw. Seriously from six-minute mark to the close...it's heavenly.

Other new tracks that are super epic with intertwined screaming and singing are "A New Aurora" and closer "The Traitor's March" which are both excellent numbers, as well as "My Hands Will Burn First" , which is much shorter at 3:03 and condenses the band's best features, combining them with stop/start singing as well as call and response, and one helluva mammoth close.

The revisited song "Glances" from the EP shows up but is broken in two with the heater coming second, thus having two ambient jams in a row which in my opinion kinda disrupts the flow of the album. Regardless the second part rules with some absolutely majestic melodies amidst some seriously imposing post-hardcore/post-metal, with "Glances (Part I)" providing the aformentioned ambient intro with reversed instrumentals at the close.

"Marasm" is an instrumental behemoth, sitting at around the 15-minute mark. Beautiful and haunting, just like the two vocalists even though they are absent here. The perfect mirror. "Ascension" is another lengthy (but less so) mostly instrumental ambient/noise song with eerie intro and piano arriving halfway through, with full instrumentals for only the briefest of moments around the 7-minute mark. "Infinite Sunset of the Sleepless Man" is another straight-up atmospheric/noise track, making me wish for a few more bangers.

I'd be quite unfair if I didn't add in the two songs that would have appeared on their sophomore LP had it been finished/released. The first is a live version of a song that I just dubbed "New Song", a swelling, sweaty nightmare of a jam that swirls around like a dream with an ever-looming sense of danger and transitions seamlessly to screaming, spacey, post-metal ear-candy. The studio song that Sammy showed me on the podcast (and my introduction to the band) is titled "Weight Bearer". Leaning hard into the dark gothic sounds of AmenRa, this prodigious number has a gorgeous mid-section with clean singing and perhaps the band's fastest/hardest section at the tail-end.

In April of 2016 AMIA VENERA LANDSCAPE posted saying the new album was going to be delayed so they could fine-tune the mixing/mastering process...and now's September 2022 and there has been no update :( Good lord of science almighty please give us that last album.

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DISCOGRAPHY

2009 - Amia Venera Landscape cdEP

2010 - The Long Procession cdLP

2014-2015 - unreleased songs surface from 'Vision I: The Great Mystery'

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(2009) AMIA VERNERA LANDSCAPE - "Nichòlas" (from 'Amia Venera Landscape') official music video