### Alchemy Room: Origin of fears

#### 17/06/09 || Trauma

I wonder what I was really expecting when I saw this album in waiting for a review. Was there a reason it wasn’t yet claimed for review? “Oh, come on. It’ll be fun to listen to something bad tonight,” I told myself. Well, I can go to hell as far as I am concerned.

Let me get an introduction to this craptastic band out of the way. This group hails from Torino, Italy and are fronted by a woman. That didn’t exactly excite me because usually female fronted metal is pretty bad, and this isn’t an exception. Their fearless leader’s name is Fabio (not that Fabio. Bummer, I know). I say fearless because you gotta be to write and record stuff like this.

First I’ll start off with the vocals: She’s not a great singer. Maybe it’s the source material, maybe it’s not, but she doesn’t bring a whole lot to the band and definitely doesn’t make them stand out at all. In between the extended instrumental sections in each song I forgot she’s even there. And speaking of extended instrumental sections, they are riddled with both poorly played and well played solos. Occasionally I’ll hear the odd riff that makes me tap my toes for about 2 seconds, but it’s mostly so mediocre or worse it makes me wonder what would drive someone to write stuff so bad, and that’s already been done a trillion times over at that.

Oh, and here’s a good tip: do not, and I repeat DO NOT start every song the same way. How are you going to bring your music out of the cesspool that is progressive metal when you can’t even form your own identity musically (hint: a cheese band name is not a good start)? Does every beginning of a song need synth and clean sounding guitars? It’s nice to sometimes have an easy going part lead you into a heavier one, but eventually it becomes a roller coaster ride (that’s an over-exaggeration if there ever was one) that I just end up not having the patience to listen to any longer. A couple of the songs hit the near 15-minute mark which just made me cringe.

The production sounds like it was done with something like ProTools and no budget, and I’m probably correct since it was self-produced by the band. The mix isn’t so good and makes the competent drummer sound like the rest of the music – bland.

2 out of 10.

- Information
- Released: 2009
- Label: Self released
- Website: Alchemy Room MySpace
- Band
- Fabio La Manna: guitars, keyboards, fx, bass, music, lyrics
- Irene Mondino: vocals
- Andy Monge: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. Inside my fear
- 02. La fin absolue du monde
- 03. Obsession red blood
- 04. Lost
- 05. Waking the child part 1
- 06. Waking the child part 2