Artist: All My Faith Lost
Album: Untitled
Label: Cyclic Law
Release Date: 09/03/2021
Country: Italy
We take a look at All My Faith Lost and their latest full-length offering Untitled, set to be released March 9th on Cyclic Law, in partnership with Earsplit PR.
The band hail from Italy and have been inexistence for two decades. Since this time they’ve put out a number of releases, but until releasing this album had been on an eleven year gap following their 2009 EP Decade. The band is Viola Roccagli (vocals, piano, synths and flute), Federico Salvador (vocals, guitars and synths), Angelo Roccagli (guitars and bass guitar) and Fabio Polo (violins). We also have guest artists Alice Micol Moro (cello on White thread, The ice princess and Nymphs IV), Chiara Tricarico (vocals on White thread) and Marco I. Benevento (vocals on White thread). The album was recorded between 2014 and 2019 in home studios and was mixed by Paolo Rebellato in 2020 and mastered by Frederic Arbour in 2020.
Lastly before we get into the music you need to understand the concept behind this album, because it’s a truly interesting one. The band state:
“Untitled is profoundly motivated by art where each song takes inspiration from paintings of some of our favorite artists related to the Surrealism movement such as João Ruas, Tara McPherson, Nicoletta Ceccoli, and Ray Caesar. Each painting suggested us a story, instilled feelings and emotions that were eventually translated into lyrics and musical compositions, touching upon a diversity themes such as the human estrangement from nature (“Nymphs IV,” “Keeping Time”), death and the afterlife (“Awakening The Moon,” “We All Die Sometimes,” “The Inconvenience Of Spirits”), Greek mythology (“Cassandra”), and some of the darker aspects of love (“White Thread,” “Flood”). The album jointly flows like a poignant journey through dreams and moonlight forests.”
With that understanding of the music presented on the release we can now look at the music. The band play an ethereal blend of neoclassical, gothic, darkwave and neofolk. Their music has a real beauty to it and carries an impressive depth of emotion. As stated, each track is intended to convey a different range of emotions, an objective that they fully accomplish. Instrumentally speaking, the album is a thing of beauty with masterful composition and flawless execution. The combination of both neoclassical and darkwave influences allows the band to create music with a real depth to it. The fusion of string, wind and key instruments with darkwave textures create a truly captivating audio offering. Personally, I am a big fan of acoustic music when it’s done right and in this case it definitely has been. There is a certain tone and emotion that expressive acoustic work creates that is very hard to replicate with electric guitar work and personally I’m glad the band didn’t go in that direction.
There’s a truly ethereal quality to the album, not just from the instrumentals, but also thanks to the album’s vocal performances, not only from the band’s vocalists but also from the guest vocal segments. Viola’s voice has an almost angelic quality to it, conveying so much emotion and while sounding mournful and forlorn actually soothes the listener. Federico on the other hand has a somewhat gothic tone to his vocals that while also carrying emotion does not possess that soothing quality, rather it adds a very small amount of edge to the music. As far as vocal performances go, track 7 White Thread is a masterpiece, featuring not only both of the band’s vocalists but also both of the guest vocalists. The result is a profoundly moving piece of music that engages the listener from start to finish. I also have to give heavy praise to track 8 Awakening the Moon, the vocals on this track are also fantastic, pariticulalry when paired with the simplistic, yet emotional paino work on the song.
Overall, this is a fantastic release and one that I believe everyone should check out. If you’re a fan of this style of music, then you’ll definitely want to give this a listen. If you aren’t, then maybe this will be the album that helps you finally break into this genre. Give it a spin today, at the very least check out track 7 White Thread once it is released tomorrow, you will not regret it.
Listen to and order the album below:
Bandcamp:
Order the album:
Soundcloud:
Band’s wesbite:
