Raving Season - Amnio

Now, when it comes to Doom, Gothic, and Death Metal that is rolled up into one, you know something eruptive is going to happen. The growling and sinister tones featuring the Beauty and the Beast vocals of soft mixed with operatic sounds and growling and vicious roars makes it unexpected and an experience that you will never forget. One of the most up-and-coming bands to come out of Italy is a group called, Raving Season, a quintet that has this combination between Epica, Anathema, and My Dying Bride, shows how astonishing they can take it up a level.

Since their formation in 2005, they were trying to find their niche and sound to see which direction they want to go into three years ago. And after releasing an EP back in 2009 and finally getting a buzz in the audience and some line-up changes, their debut album, Amnio, released this year from My Kingdom Music, is dark, symphonic, and surreal, and it goes to show how they have come a long way. In the band they are; Judith on clean vocals, Federica doing the growling vocals, Sergio and Marco S. on Guitars, and Marco on Bass and the session drumming is done by Luca.

There are a lot of the doomy and bits of the symphonic elements floating through on the compositions that almost makes it an operatic atmosphere at times between Judith and Federica doing the soft and evil singing to give it huge jumping surprise moments on nine compositions that are on the album and ‘80s synthesizers coming in the arrangements to make it almost Film-Noir at times. Songs like My Last Murderer, Silent Lake and Restless Rain (il Rumore Della Pioggia) go into a deeper darker cavernous place and very gothic setting.

Most of the time, it’s a mourning and a cry for a loss one and uplifting momentum to feel you are on the edge of your seat.  Then on Testament, it’s an homage to Amberian Dawn and Dotma thanks to Judith’s strong vocals with an operatic twist with a tense moment of heavy guitar riffs and laid-back drum work while the electronic motions on the title track, goes into the styles of Radiohead, Bjork, and Tangerine Dream as it becomes a synth-layered-acoustic paradise as if it was recorded for a crime/sci-fi movie set in a dystopian universe.

There’s no question that Raving Season’s debut album is soon going to become a part of the headphones album genre. By going through various motions of the genres of electronic, symphonic, doom, gothic, and moving into uncharted waters, Amnio is an enhancing yet sharp intense debut and that is a primary and a basic touch that is strange but beautiful.