### Dark Lunacy: Forget me not

#### 26/05/09 || GardensTale

One of the awesome things about writing here is that you can recommend bands you love and one’s ever seemed to have fucken heard of. You think, “fuck it, that shit ain’t fair, Bull for my Penistime is making millions and these guys get jack shit!” Well, time to end this shit here and now, because Dark Lunacy is one hell of an act, which above all sports originality, atmosphere and fucking great musicianship. It’s a real fucken fresh breath through the world of melodic death metal (well, sort of… classification gets a little difficult here).

Let me start at the beginning. These fuckers are Italian. You can hear it, too. The poor grasp of English is one hint, but the violins and pianos are the second one. A lot of love for classical music on here. You see, Dark Lunacy must have looked at melodic death metal and said: “You know what this could use? Something besides guitars to boost the atmosphere. Something slightly more… awesome.” And so, lo and behold, comes an album with very different songwriting, a pretty unique sound, and fucking violins and pianos and… is that a goddamn xylophone?!

I’m drifting a bit, so let me gather the focus here and set your mind straight, dear cocksuckers. The sound of Dark Lunacy could best be described as those sad solos with violin or piano from classical music, combined with a very forlorn-sounding melodic death metal. The effect is like someone made gothic metal what it should be: dark, menacing, despairing, interchanging sonic assaults with heart-tearing melody.

Nowhere does it sound tacked on, however, like it has with so many different bands in the past. I won’t go into name calling, but Nightwish is one of those bands. Not that Dark Lunacy sounds anything like them, fuck no! This is just to illustrate a point. The point that Dark Lunacy know how to fucking integrate ‘alien’ instruments into metal. It sounds like it belongs together, subtle but eager, and this is all thanks to the pretty much magnificent songwriting.

I’m sure there will be people writing off this band straight away, seeing the word “gothic” in the review and clicking it away. They are sorely mistaken. There is plenty of balls in this release, from the hoarse grunt of the vocals to the bulky guitars to the low, rumbling yet atmospheric bass (which shines beautifully in a solo on “Lunacyrcus”). They just manage to combine these massive balls with beautiful work on the violin and piano. And the occasional xylophone.

If I have to pinpoint any flaws, I’d say “Lacryma” was kind of unnecessary and we could have done without it. But it’s a minor blemish, and I have a skip button. So fuck it, Dark Lunacy busted out a great fucken disc here and I can highly recommend it for everyone who is even slightly interested in emotion in their metal.

9 readers who will pinpoint I also mentioned a bad grasp of English out of 10.

- Information
- Released: 2008
- Label: Fuel
- Website: www.darklunacy.com
- Band
- Mike Lunacy: vocals
- Enomys: guitars, piano
- Imer: bass
- Baijkal: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. The dirge
- 02. Lunacyrcus
- 03. Fragile caress
- 04. Through the non-time
- 05. Defaced
- 06. Serenity
- 07. My dying pathway
- 08. Fiamm
- 09. Lacryma
- 10. Die to reborn
- 11. Forget me not